As previously discussed, Governor Quinn’s proposed $2.7 billion Medicaid cut has many that follow nursing home care — both patients and facilities alike — rightly concerned. It’s certainly reasonable to worry how many of us will pay for our necessary care once we can no longer care for ourselves. With this in mind, a Chicago…
As if the nursing home industry needed any more negative publicity, a story recently broke regarding a former employee of an Edwardsville nursing home. While on its face, the article appears to detail a lawsuit filed by a former nursing home employee that alleges she was fired after filing a workers’ compensation claim, there is…
The headlines in newspapers and websites across the country are often filled with troubling and heartbreaking stories of what can happen when under-staffed and under-funded nursing homes let resident safety and dignity fall by the wayside. In a shutter-inducing story out of Florida, the federal government is mulling a lawsuit against a Florida nursing home…
Last year, we spent some time discussing the haggling back and forth in the Illinois General Assembly about what to do about a provision in the Nursing Home Care Act that mandated increased staffing levels for skilled nursing personnel, but held off setting the threshold levels for a later date. Last spring, there was much…
As recently reported, a county-run New York nursing home has agreed, along with several other companies, to settle a lawsuit stemming from the death of a 90 year-old nun that died after a 200 pound dresser fell on top of her. As the article explains in detail, the nun, who was a resident in the…
Medicare and Medicaid funding (or potential lack thereof) has been one of the more prominent topics this election season on both national and local levels. In Illinois, and many other states, advocates on behalf of nursing homes and management companies have cited to dwindling Medicare and Medicaid funding as justification for their inability (or perhaps…
As the recent news stories popping up around the state have made clear, the way in which nursing homes are customarily owned and operated has become an extremely contentious topic. We’ve discussed the way that nursing homes often set up different legal “entities” that shuffle around ownership of the physical building, while others, for instance,…
We’ve often discussed the difficulties that arise when filing suit against a nursing home stemming from the complex nature of how the “behind the scenes players” structure the corporate entities behind these facilities. As a recent article out of California suggests one recent lawsuit is looking at this issue from a different and unique vantage…
In a very bizarre and tragic story out of California 2 nursing home residents have died and 4 others have been hospitalized from alleged food poisoning after a caregiver placed what turned out to be poisonous wild mushrooms into a soup that was then served to residents. As the article suggests, an initial investigation into…
We’ve spent a good deal of time discussing the persistent problem of nursing home under-staffing and the wide range of effects it has on all aspects of a nursing home. Decreased attentiveness, and under-qualified (and over-worked) staffing has a pretty straightforward effect on the health and safety of residents. Now even the nursing home employees…