Healthcare Compliance Perspective:
The Residents’ Bill of Rights ensures that every resident across the nation living in a long-term care facility has the right to dignity and respect as well as the right to be protected from abuse, mistreatment, neglect and exploitation. Unfortunately, in the two examples below, the residents were neglected to the extent which resulted in death. Not only are these cases fraud as the facility is billing for worthless services, but the employees responsible for the neglect were charged with criminally negligent homicide.
Colorado officials recently charg
ed five employees in the deaths of two at-risk adults in two long-term care facilities. One of the deaths occurred in 2014 and the other in 2016.
The first case involved the death of a man with multiple diagnoses that included a seizure disorder and who required 1 to 1 supervision-especially when he was bathing. Two staff were on duty in 2014 while the man was in the bathtub. However, they did not remain with the man while he was in the tub; instead, they checked on him every ten minutes. The man drowned while in the tub unsupervised, and it is felt that his death may have been precipitated by a seizure.
The two staff on duty were both charged with the negligent homicide of an at-risk adult and one of them was additionally charged with manslaughter.
In the second case, the state issued arrest warrants for three staff members after the heat-related death of a 94-year-old, female resident in an assisted living facility. The woman with advanced dementia was left unattended and outside the facility, and she fell and landed in a landscaping rock bed. She had been lying in the hot, 86 to 92-degree Fahrenheit temperature for nearly one and one-half hours before the staff found her. The woman died, and the cause of death was attributed to probable heat stress. Video surveillance also showed that the woman had not been checked on by the staff for at least three hours.
All three of the staff charged were responsible for keeping count of who was outside and all three were charged with criminally negligent homicide of an at-risk adult. One person was also charged with evidence tampering and another was charged with attempting to influence a public servant. Only one of the three has been arrested; the other two have not been located and are being sought by local law enforcement.
