nursing home abuse

Published on: May 17, 2024

Biden Administration Sets Minimum Nursing Home Staffing Requirement

Understaffing at nursing homes is a primary cause of abuse and neglect at these facilities. The White House has moved to tackle such neglect by imposing a minimum staffing requirement on nursing homes.

In the final version of the new rule, the Biden administration has clarified that at least one nursing staff member should be present in a nursing home 24 hours of the day. The rule also requires these facilities to have enough staff members to provide at least 3.18 hours of care for every resident in a facility in a day. The rule also includes a requirement for nursing home facilities to properly assess the health needs of every single resident in their facility, to help speed up the diagnosis and treatment of sicker residents.

In September, the administration invited comments from the public about the proposed new rule, and received more than 48,000 comments from the public. These comments involved residents who had been forced to lay on the floor for a long time after falling down because staff was not available to attend to them, and older residents who had to sit in their own filth for hours without being cleaned up. Other comments said that residents were often not fed on time, leading to malnutrition. All of these cases of neglect are the direct result of understaffing at nursing homes, a serious problem that has worried the federal administration for decades.

Published on: March 15, 2024

Staffing Shortages, Infection Control Issues Plague Nursing Homes

by Robert N. Katz, Esq.

Many nursing homes in the United States continue to face staffing shortages and struggle with controlling infections in their facilities. Both issues present serious health and safety concerns for residents. Unfortunately, neither challenge is easily addressed.

According to a new report, many nursing facilities in the United States continue to have problems with retaining staff and struggle with low staffing levels. The report was released by the Inspector General’s Office at the Department of Health and Human Services and states that high levels of employee attrition rates, huge employee turnover and employee burnout are to blame for many of these staffing shortages.

Many nursing facilities now grapple with the challenges of not just losing experienced employees, but also training fresh hires to meet federal standards. Lower numbers of staff members on roll or fewer trained staff members mean a higher risk of abuse and neglect at these nursing facilities. Many experienced workers fled the industry during the pandemic when nursing homes were found to have the highest levels of Covid-19 infection rates, and most nursing homes that lost large numbers of workers are still struggling to meet the shortfall. Recruitment and staffing firms that supply workers to these nursing homes are also charging higher rates than earlier, putting more pressure on the facilities.

Published on: February 8, 2023

Feds to Probe Abuse of Antipsychotics in Nursing Homes

by Robert N. Katz, Esq.

The federal administration has announced that it will soon launch an investigation of the wrongful use or overuse of antipsychotic drugs on patients in nursing homes.

The administration has long been investigating the misuse of antipsychotic sedatives, including those that are typically prescribed for nursing home patients who do not require these drugs at all. In too many cases, investigators have found nursing homes wrongly classifying certain patients as schizophrenic so that they may be prescribed antipsychotic sedative drugs. The administration has also found several nursing homes engaging in these practices and wants to understand whether these practices are widespread in the industry. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services believes that the problem is a prevalent one, and that its scope has not been fully investigated. Therefore, it has now announced that it will soon launch an investigation of such practices in the nursing home industry.

Schizophrenia is a psychotic disorder that is characterized by symptoms that include delusions, hallucinations and other symptoms. Antipsychotic drugs are often used to treat patients with schizophrenia. Side effects of these medications can include death. It is estimated that less than 1% of the American population suffers from schizophrenia. However, more than 99 nursing homes classify as many as 20% of their patients with schizophrenia. That is a disproportionately large percentage of nursing home residents who are being diagnosed with this condition, relative to the American population with schizophrenia. In other words, the math simply does not add up here.