Healthcare Compliance Perspective -Nursing Home Abuse:
The Compliance Officer should involve the QAPI nurse and the Compliance Committee to review whether staffing insufficiency might contribute to possible abuse and neglect events. The Compliance Officer should review whether Staff received education and training on dementia management and resident abuse prevention. Such Education/Training should be provided periodically to all staff and to all newly hired staff. Audits should be developed and implemented to discover unreported incidents of abuse and neglect and to discover complaint files that may not have been investigated.
After the death of their mother in 2012, the daughters of a 96-year-old woman with dementia sued an Oklahoma nursing home and rehabilitation center neglect and abuse. The main evidence supporting the family’s claim was video footage from a hidden camera that had been placed in the resident’s room when the daughters’ thought someone was stealing from her.
What the video revealed was two of the nursing home’s staff abusing the resident by using force to make her lie down. They pushed her head down which made the woman unable to breath. One of the staff also stuffed latex gloves into the resident’s mouth. The video was released shortly before the resident died.
Although the nursing home terminated the employment of the two employees, it was charged with abuse and negligence in the lawsuit which the federal court jury upheld with its verdict earlier this year and the $1.2 million award.
The nursing home’s attorneys have expressed their belief that the $1.2 million award was excessive and that they will be appealing it on behalf of the nursing home.
Coincidentally, a non-profit watch group, Families for Better Care (FBC), released the results of data collected regarding nursing homes in Oklahoma. The group’s data indicates that Oklahoma nursing homes were ranked “third-worst” overall throughout the country. The previous year ranked them as the “fourth-worst.” The president of the FBC indicated that insufficient staffing as the main cause of the poor rating.
