Medical Malpractice

September 14, 2021

Bombshell Report: “Phony” Diagnoses Behind Nursing Home Druggings

by Law Offices of Thomas L. Gallivan, PLLC

Recent reports show that nursing homes are prescribing antipsychotic drugs at an alarmingly high rate to patients that do not even require these medications.

Nursing homes are over-diagnosing patients with schizophrenia in order to conceal the high rates at which they’re prescribing antipsychotic medications, according to a recent report by the New York Times. Schizophrenia diagnoses among nursing home residents have “soared” as much as 70% since the federal government started making public disclosures of antipsychotic drug prescriptions in 2012. These prescriptions factor into nursing homes’ funding and ratings: nursing homes that prescribe them at high rates can receive lower ratings from the government, which in turn can affect their funding.

September 8, 2021

Linden Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation Cited for Infection

by Law Offices of Thomas L. Gallivan, PLLC

Linden Center For Nursing and Rehabilitation located in Brooklyn, NY has received multiple citations for being in violation of public health code and failing to protect their residents from infection and unnecessary medication.

Linden Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation received 16 citations for violations of public health code between 2017 and 2021, according to New York State Department of Health records accessed on September 3, 2021. The Brooklyn nursing home’s citations resulted from a total of two surveys by state inspectors. The violations they describe include the following:

1. The nursing home failed to adequately protect residents from infection. Under Section 483.80 of the Federal Code, nursing homes are required to create and maintain a program to prevent and control the development and transmission of disease. A January 2019 citation found that Linden Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation failed to ensure such. The citation states specifically that the facility did not clean or adequately maintain certain areas in its laundry room. State inspectors observed “laundry bins in disrepair,” walls that were “chipped, dirty, in need of painting,” a dirty and clogged water drain, a floor in need of cleaning and sweeping, milk crates filled with dirty used mops, used employee coats and hats in the clean linen area, and overflowing garbage bins. In an interview, the facility’s Director of Housekeeping said that the facility had one housekeeper assigned to the area. A plan of correction undertaken by the facility included the education of laundry and housekeeping staffers.

September 7, 2021

Rebekah Rehab and Extended Care Cited for Psychotropic Drug Use

by Law Offices of Thomas L. Gallivan, PLLC

Rebekah Rehab and Extended Care Center has failed to protect residents from being given unnecessary psychotropic drugs.

Rebekah Rehab and Extended Care Center received 10 citations for violations of public health code between 2017 and 2021, according to New York State Department of Health records accessed on September 3, 2021. The Bronx nursing home’s citations resulted from a total of three surveys by state inspectors. The violations they describe include the following:

1. The nursing home did not implement adequate measures to control infection. Section 483.30 of the Federal Code stipulates that nursing homes must create and maintain an infection prevention and control program to prevent the development and spread of viruses and disease. An August 2017 citation found that Rebekah Rehab and Extended Care Center failed to ensure such. The citation specifically describes a Licensed Practical Nurse who “did not remove gloves, perform hand hygiene and don’t clean gloves” after cleansing a resident’s pressure ulcer. In an interview after the procedure, the nurse stated, “I thought I was washing my hands as needed in regard to washing my hands and changing my gloves.” A plan of correction undertaken by the facility included the re-education of the staffer and the observation of other nursing staffers “to ensure that they were following appropriate wound care techniques.”

August 25, 2021

NY Assemblyman: Hold For-Profit Nursing Homes Accountable

by Law Offices of Thomas L. Gallivan, PLLC

Thousands of Covid-19 nursing home deaths are being examined in order to address underlying issues.

A report released last year by New York Assemblyman Ron Kim examined the thousands of deaths from Covid-19 in the state’s nursing homes in an attempt to identify underlying problems that caused the raft of fatalities and what can be done to address those problems. The report, published by Kim’s office in July 2020, is available here.

October 9, 2020

Do “No Harm” Citations Adversely Affect Nursing Home Accountability?

by Law Offices of Thomas L. Gallivan, PLLC

A new edition of the Long Term Care Community Coalition Elder Justice Newsletter asks a simple question: does providing a nursing home resident breakfast in their soiled bed constitute harm? How about failing to provide a stop date for a resident’s psychotropic medication?

“No Harm” deficiencies refer to citations of rule violations at nursing homes in which health inspectors determined that the violations caused “no harm” to residents. As the LTCCC notes, data provided by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Service, which mandate minimum standards of care for nursing homes participating in their programs, show that more than 95% of nursing home health citations describe “no harm” deficiencies. The LTCCC argues, however, that these no harm citations reflect systemic failures to recognize the suffering of nursing home residents, which in turn results in systemic failures to hold nursing homes accountable through financial penalties. “In the absence of a financial penalty,” the newsletter states, “nursing homes may have little incentive to correct the underlying causes of resident abuse, neglect, and other forms of harm.”

The newsletter proceeds to provide instances of health violations in which regulators determined that no harm was done to the resident in question. For example:

October 8, 2020

Oklahoma Cracks Down on Antipsychotics in Nursing Homes

by Law Offices of Thomas L. Gallivan, PLLC

Oklahoma’s new elder abuse law cracks down on the use by nursing homes of “chemical restraints” on their patients. According to America Nurse Today, chemical restraints are unnecessary medications used to “restrict a patient’s movement or behavior.” Importantly, these chemical restraints are not a part of a standard approved treatment. Most commonly, nursing homes use antipsychotic medications – powerful psychotropics with a variety of side effects, drug interactions, and risks.

While it is undoubtedly immoral and unethical to force someone without a proper diagnosis to take powerful mind-altering medications just to make them more compliant with nursing staff, the practice is sadly very common. According to Health Affairs, 14 percent of all nursing home patients are on an antipsychotic. The industry watchdog estimates that 83 percent of these prescriptions are for an unapproved or off-label use. A report by the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services found that 40 percent of nursing home residents on antipsychotics do not have a diagnosis of psychosis.

To counter the scourge of chemical restraints meant to make elderly residents docile, Oklahoma is cracking down on the nursing homes. Under Oklahoma’s new law, a doctor must conduct a medical exam, diagnose the patient, and obtain informed written consent from the nursing home resident or their caregiver before writing a prescription for antipsychotics. After passing the law, Oklahoma’s governor noted that the state with the most nursing home residents on antipsychotics (20 percent) will now have the toughest law against it.

October 29, 2019

Senate Releases List of 400 Troubled Nursing Homes

by Law Offices of Thomas L. Gallivan, PLLC

Senators released a list of 400 nursing homes with a ‘persistent record of poor care,’ according to the federal legislators. These nursing homes are not included in the federal government’s “special focus facilities” a list of nursing homes released by the government each year indicating poor care and unsafe conditions. According to the Senators, the list of 400 facilities is “virtually indistinguishable” from special focus facilities and the elder care facilities are not all lumped together only because a 2014 law imposed a cap on the number of so-called special focus facilities. Consequently, this left 400 facilities subject to heightened government scrutiny without public knowledge.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, approximately 1.3 million Americans are nursing home residents at 15,600 facilities across the country. The federal government identified 3 percent of these nursing homes as problematic in April. In New York, these nursing homes include New Roc Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Rochester, The Knolls in Valhalla, and Cayuga Ridge Extended Care in Ithaca, according to LoHud.com. In addition to these nursing homes, fourteen other New York long-term care facilities were included in the list of 400 released by the Senate.

October 23, 2019

New York Nursing Home Fined 50k for Medication Error

by Law Offices of Thomas L. Gallivan, PLLC

The federal government fined a Buffalo nursing home $47,827 for erroneously administering insulin to a resident. According to The Buffalo News, the fine against Humboldt House represents the sixth largest in New York for 2018. The newspaper reports that a physician at the nursing home administered insulin to a diabetic resident in February 2018 despite a hospital discharge report warning the nursing home staff to “PLEASE AVOID GIVING THIS PATIENT INSULIN” – in all capital letters.

The nursing home resident, who was not named by the newspaper, was found unresponsive multiple times over the next few days. After reviving the elderly woman with medication and fruit juice, the nursing home finally realized its mistake. Federal officials determined this medication error caused “actual harm” to a patient, the most serious type of violation for a nursing home.

October 21, 2019

Trump Administration Seeks to Weaken Regulation on Antipsychotics in Nursing Homes

by Law Offices of Thomas L. Gallivan, PLLC

As part of a broader push to deregulate the nursing home industry, the Trump administration has proposed rolling back regulations on antipsychotic use in nursing homes. Under current nursing home regulations, doctors who prescribe antipsychotics to the elderly on an “as needed” basis may only write a prescription for 14 days. At the end of 14 days, the physician must reexamine the nursing home patient and write another prescription, if necessary. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is proposing new regulations that would change the 14-day window to 70 days.

Antipsychotic use in the elderly has remained unnecessarily high and controversial, with public health experts and elder care advocates describing the practice as elder abuse. According to these experts, nursing homes who put their residents on antipsychotics lack a valid medical reason and are simply drugging these patients. Antipsychotics, such as Seroquel and Zyprexa, commonly sedate patients, especially at higher doses. In addition to doping up the residents, these mind-altering drugs also have serious side effects. The medications commonly interact with other drugs and increase the risk of everything from slip and fall accidents to death.

October 16, 2019

75 Percent of Nursing Homes Understaffed

by Law Offices of Thomas L. Gallivan, PLLC

Almost three-fourths of nursing homes in the United States “almost never” have the minimum number of nurses on staff, according to McKnight’s Long-Term Care News. The new study, which utilized a year of payroll data, found that 75 percent of facilities self-reported a number of nurses that are “almost never in compliance with” the federally required minimums. The study was produced by researchers at Harvard University and Vanderbilt University who then published their findings in Health Affairs.

The study comes on the heels of new federal guidelines on reporting nursing staff. Previously, nursing homes would provide a sample of their time-sheets to local regulators when their facility was inspected. Unfortunately, nursing homes commonly knew when inspections would occur and would respond by increasing the number of nurses on staff in the weeks before an inspection. Further, local regulators – who are typically from the state’s health department – did not always scrutinize or authenticate the time-sheets provided by the nursing home. For these reasons, the federal government created a computer system that requires nursing homes to upload payroll information on staffing levels. This new system benefits from live-updates and 24/7 monitoring of the nursing home.