Healthcare Compliance Perspective – Fatal Fall:
The Compliance Officer should review with the Administrator and the Compliance Committee, the facility’s policies and procedures regarding the employment of contract medical personnel, medical protocol for dealing with falls and head trauma and potential understaffing concerns. Staff should receive education and training about the required medical protocol to be used after a resident has experienced a fall with an accompanying head trauma and the importance of not falsifying entries into a resident’s medical record. The charge nurse should be in-serviced about her responsibility to ask another nurse to perform required neurological and vital signs checks or any other needed procedures if she is unavailable. The Compliance Officer should ensure that an audit is developed and implemented to periodically check that required medical protocol was performed on residents experiencing falls and head trauma and that the records have not been falsified.
After determining that there was sufficient evidence for a trial, a 
. The judges order came after the conclusion of a preliminary hearing that included nurses’ testimonies, testimonies from a Health Department regulator, investigators, a medical examiner and the viewing of surveillance tapes. The charges include involuntary manslaughter, neglect of care of a dependent person and tampering with records.
The nurse was officially charged in May by the Pennsylvania attorney general. The judge pointed out in a statement that it is a tragic situation. She also stressed that if there was anyone else responsible for the care of the resident, she would order the same for them.
The prosecutors allege that the resident died from bleeding in his brain after he fell and hit his head. The nurse to be tried was on duty the night the incident happened and according to medical policy, she was supposed to perform periodic neurological and vital sign checks on the resident.
Along with the allegation that the nurse did not perform required checks, it is also alleged that the nurse falsified the resident’s records to indicate that she had performed the checks. The video surveillance tapes indicate that the nurse did not go near the resident at the times that she recorded she had performed the checks. In fact, one of the times recorded by the nurse for performing the checks occurred after the resident had died.
The nurse’s attorney gave a different interpretation about the surveillance footage. She contends that the “footage shows a woman who was working to care for the 38 patients on the floor, not someone who was sitting back and avoiding her job.” The attorney also said that she believes the nurse is being used as a “scapegoat” because of his son’s public image and pressure by influential persons to have criminal charges filed.
