Under new laws signed by Gov. Rick Scott on March 26, 2018, Nursing homes and assisted living facilities in Florida will now be required to have generators to provide backup power during an outage. This legislation was passed in response to the deaths of 12 residents at the Rehabilitation Center…
According to new study published in the February American Journal of Infection Control, researchers found that implementing simple hand-washing protocols in nursing homes help prevent the spread of deadly infections. The study showed that if nursing home employees exercise the hand washing techniques that are already in practice in hospitals, the spread of…
A new study released this week by the Human Rights Watch found that many nursing home residents are needlessly being given antipsychotic drugs. The 157 page report titled “They Want Docile’: How Nursing Homes in the United States Overmedicate People with Dementia,” found that approximately 179,000 people, mostly those suffering…
According to a report by the Associated Press, an investigation into the death of a 76 year old woman at an Ohio nursing home revealed she spent roughly 8 hours outside while temperatures fell below zero. Phyllis Campbell was found dead from hypothermia on January 7 outside Hilty Memorial Home…
One of the most difficult decisions families have to face is deciding to put a loved one in a nursing home. They want to make sure they are placing their family member in a safe environment where they will receive the proper care they need. Many of those families rely…
Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf’s administration is putting out a new Medicaid feature that’s aimed to decrease the number of enrollees in nursing homes in the future. It is also intended to lessen a large expense for the state, which has a rapidly growing elderly population. This plan has been in…
Over the last few decades there has been a movement to reduce bed rails and other variations of restraints that are used on nursing home residents. This movement has been growing ever since Congress enacted the Nursing Home Reform Act in 1987. This law included a prohibition on restraints being…
More than 1 in 4 cases of possible sexual and physical abuse against nursing home patients went unreported to police, according to a government audit. These unreported cases violate a federal law requiring immediate notification of nursing home abuse. The Health and Human Services inspector general’s office issued an “early alert”…
Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro is part of a coalition of 16 State Attorneys General and the Attorney General from the District of Columbia who sent a letter to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) hoping to protect nursing home patients. These states are recommending that CMS keep…
The Pennsylvania Department of Health has levied $816,000 in fines against nursing home providers already in the first half of 2017. That is more than double the $407,450 in fines handed out in 2016. The department also handed out fines of $170,050 in 2015 and $62,000 in 2014. In 2014,…