Risk Management Perspective
Policy/Procedure: Policies and procedures need to be up-to-date, including the content of a Resident Bill of Rights.
Training: All staff should be educated during orientation, and periodically, annually, and as needed on the Resident Bill of Rights. Family and residents should specifically be educated regarding financial threats and possible identity theft.
Audit: Periodically perform internal and external audits of the business office, including residents’finances. Communicate with residents and family members regarding monitoring of their accounts for any abnormalities.
A nursing home employee was convicted of using information in her patients’ medical charts to file fraudulent tax returns. In an unpublished opinion, a three-judge panel rejected her appeal of her five-count conviction and sentence, disagreeing that the district court had wrongly applied a sentence enhancement based on her abusing a position of trust. There was sufficient evidence that the nursing home employee “used her position in the nursing home to improperly acquire the identification information of numerous residents,” the court said. The defendant had argued that the government lacked evidence that she was in a professional or managerial position, or that she had reviewed the charts of the nursing home residents whose identities were used to file fraudulent tax returns. But the panel disagreed, saying the jurors were correct in determining that a nurse or care worker can have access to medical charts that contain personal information such as Social Security numbers used for tax returns.
