Articles Posted in Nursing Home Safety

Residents in the west wing of the White Building at Mountain City Nursing Home in Hazle Township were evacuated to the east wing when a heater in a stairway caused a fire and smoke.

According to an article on the StandardSpeaker.com, the fire stopped as soon as maintenance workers turned off the heater. But residents were moved to escape the smoke. No one was injured, but smoke reached the first 2 floors of the west wing until automatic doors stopped the progress of the smoke. Ambulances were sent to the scene as well as a rescue squad.

In the article, the fire chief of Hazle Township said the facility has fire drills four times a year and checks the fire alarms monthly. These are requirements of the Department of Health.

A recent article on CumberLink.com has great news for the home health care industry: officials report that the demand for home health care workers will increase by 70% as baby boomers reach retirement age.

With seniors older than 85 years of age becoming the fastest growing group in the state, reports say that there could be over 600,000 new jobs by 2020. In Pennsylvania, this could generate over $29 billion.

A report titled, “Impact of the Home care and Hospice Industry on Pennsylvania’s Economy” shows the home health industry outpacing growth over the next seven years. This includes hospice care, home health care, and private duty home care.

Late last month, USAToday.com posted an alarming article that we thought we would recap in our nursing home abuse blog. The article reports that according to an investigation by USA Today, thousands of residents at nursing homes and other long-term care facilities across the country have had money taken from their savings or their trust fund accounts have been mismanaged by the facilities who are handling these accounts.

An example used at the beginning of the article explains how an administrator at a Mississippi facility knew something was amiss when she saw a receipt for a $90 pair of designer jeans paid for through a resident’s trust fund — only that resident had both his legs amputated.

According to the article, most facilities will maintain a trust fund for a resident who requests that the home handle their money. These trust funds work like a bank account, with regular statements being issued as well as accrued interest. But according to USA Today’s investigation, more than 1,500 cases were found where state and federal regulators cited nursing homes for not handling funds properly. The article explains that there could be even more cases where the perpetrators have not been caught.

Last week, Butler County hired a real estate firm to evaluate the possible sale of Sunnyview Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, the county-owned nursing home.

Although the commissioners agree that the home is a valuable resource to the community, the numbers tell a different story. According to an article on TribLive.com, it is expected to lose $1.5 million this year, and has lost $7 million over the last decade.

The sale of county-owned nursing homes is a trend that’s not unfamiliar to Pennsylvania. According to the Pennsylvania Association of County Affiliated Homes, there was at one time 50 counties that ran nursing homes. Now that number has decreased to 29. Some counties have left the nursing home business for financial reason. Others, like Lackawanna County, have sold their nursing home because of liability issues and the complications of running a nursing home. In the case of Lackawanna County, the county was sued when a resident, who was left on the toilet for 2 hours, fell off and died 2 days later.

According to the article, if the Butler County commissioners do decide to sell Sunnyview, they could be approached by as many as 10-15 companies who would be interested in buying it, the beginning of what could be a lengthy turnover process.

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Smartphones have brought a lot of conveniences to our lives, and now they may be saving lives. We read an interesting article published on HealthDay.com this week about a new study that shows doctors who used their smartphones or mobile devices to look up drug information when they were prescribing medications to patients in nursing homes helped to prevent drug reactions.

According to the article, researchers found that nearly 90 percent of doctors avoided at least one potentially dangerous drug reaction in the previous month by checking drug-reference software on their smartphones. The problem is that most nursing homes do not have electronic medical record systems, so doctors may not have access to current medication information when they are prescribing for residents.

The study was published in the Journal of the American Medical Directors Association. They found 42 percent of doctors who were surveyed used their mobile device to look up drug information. Researchers reported that this behavior was more common with doctors who had been practicing for 15 years or less.

A certified nursing assistant who worked in a Seaford, Delaware nursing home, was found guilty of patient abuse and mistreatment of an impaired adult and must stay away from nursing home facilities.

According to an article on NBCPhiladelphia.com, the nursing assistant put a trash bag over the head of a dementia patient at the Methodist Manor House in Seaford, Delaware earlier this year. The patient was not harmed.

The article states that the nursing assistant may not work in a facility that provides care to the elderly for a six-month period. The U.S. Department of Health and Social Services is also aware of the situation and can bar the nursing assistant from working in a facility that receives federal health care funds for a minimum of five years.

There’s been an increasing trend here in Pennsylvania of counties that are selling their government-owned nursing homes to private companies. The end result is to help save the county money, but sometimes it is at the expense of the care provided to residents.

However, the Claremont Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Carlisle is bucking this trend. In fact, they recently received a five-star rating (the highest rating) from the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services.

The rating is based on multiple factors, including quality of care and the results of state inspections. Nursing home inspection reports are available online and provide information to families who are researching facilities for their loved ones who need skilled nursing care. Only five years ago, Claremont had received a two-star rating.

A new report suggests that expansion of a program that delivers meals to seniors could help keep them out of nursing homes and save states money.

According to an article on U.S. News & World Reports, if each state in the continental United States increased the number of seniors who receive meals at home by 1%, it could keep over 1,700 Medicaid recipients out of nursing homes.

The study was published in the October issue of the journal Health Affairs. The study found that expanding on programs that deliver meals to homes of the elderly would allow more of them to stay in their homes, whether or not they were on Medicaid.

An article on McKnights.com reports that nursing homes who participate in performance-based government incentive programs show improvement in critical care areas.

The Regenstrief Institute and the Indiana University Center for Aging Research looked at the effects that Minnesota’s Performance-based Incentive Payment Program had on the quality of care in Minnesota nursing homes. Their findings showed improvements in target areas such as fall and rehospitalization rates more significantly than non-participating facilities. In fact, they maintained the improvements even after the incentive program ended.

According to the article, Minnesota’s program helps nursing homes to identify their problems, find evidence-based solutions and evaluate their outcomes. The program is financed through state funding.

A study published in the August edition of Health Affairs found that nursing home residents are satisfied with their overall care, but feel they could benefit from improvements to food and activities in facilities.

The study was conducted over three years, using consumer satisfaction surveys in Massachusetts. According to an article on McKnights.com, researchers hoped that their findings might help the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services decide to make consumer surveys a part of national nursing home report cards.

The study was conducted by researchers from University of Rochester Medical Center Department of Public Health Science, the University of California, San Francisco, and the University of California, Irvine. They found that nursing homes with higher staffing levels and fewer citations often had higher satisfaction rates. They also discovered that non-profit and government owned facilities scored higher than for-profit homes.