This curated news feed of stories related to nursing home and long-term care around the country includes articles and reports from media outlets and press releases from Families for Better Care.
News
Nursing Homes Are a Breeding Ground for a Fatal Fungus
Matt Richtel and Andrew Jacobs - Sep 12, 2019
Maria Davila lay mute in a nursing home bed, an anguished expression fixed to her face, as her husband stroked her withered hand. Ms. Davila, 65, suffers from a long list of ailments — respiratory failure, kidney disease, high blood pressure, an irregular heartbeat — and is kept alive by a gently beeping ventilator and a feeding tube.
Doctors recently added another diagnosis to...
MA Department of Public Health Acknowledges Delays Investigating Nursing Home Complaints
Shira Schoenberg - Sep 11, 2019
The Massachusetts Department of Public Health has acknowledged that it was not investigating complaints about nursing home care quickly enough for two years due to a lack of staffing.
The acknowledgement came in an audit by state Auditor Suzanne Bump, which faulted DPH for not conducting investigations in a timely manner.
Bump’s office reviewed 200 cases involving complaints that...
Mannford Nursing Home Workers Accused Of Patient Abuse
Tess Maune - Sep 6, 2019
Mannford police are investigating what the police chief calls a disturbing case of nursing home abuse. Police Chief Lucky Miller says his department received a tip that some caretakers at the Cimarron Pointe Nursing Home were abusing patients in their care. Miller says the abuse was reported to the Department of Human Services through email on May 20, 2019. But Miller says his...
Feds: New York Should Improve Nursing-Home Oversight
Bethany Bump - Aug 28, 2019
Federal regulators say New York needs to do more to ensure nursing homes are protecting residents after an audit revealed numerous deficiencies in areas related to the safety of residents and emergency preparedness.
The audit was conducted early last year by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General, as part of a larger effort to see if states are...
123 Have Unexpectedly Died in Nursing Homes, but Arizona Still Gives Them Top grades
Ethan Millman, Molly Stellino, Erica Block and Megan Boyanton - Aug 24, 2019
For Curtis Simmons, it was to have been a short rehab stay at the Arizona State Veteran Home in 2015 after routine back surgery. But his daughter Lauren found him groggy, and said the staff seemed uncertain about what medications they’d given him.
Soon after, on Christmas Eve, the 65-year-old Vietnam veteran was dead — the direct result of a high dose of morphine, according to...