Oklahoma Injury Lawyer Blog

Bloomberg has a troubling story in Preparing Americans for Death Allows Hospices to Neglect Life:

Robert Rogers' mother was on hospice care, but he wanted her moved to a hospital. She was wheezing and losing consciousness. Guess what happened? The for-profit hospice refused. The nurse told Rogers that "Our job is not to prepare them to live. Our job is to prepare them to die." So, Rogers called 911. Finally at the hospital, an ER doctor removed 11 maggots from an open wound. Rogers' mother died 5 days later of a sepsis infection brought on the the gangrene in her toe.

Isn't the point of hospice to "live as well as possible" during the stage of life? 

Stories are similar to this in other nursing home abuse cases. For example, if someone is put on hospice for cancer, but then develops bed sores, the health care providers generally aren't liable for their mistreatment (even though it was preventable!). With hospice, patients "give up" their rights to "curative" measures.

The Bloomberg article notes that hospice care is a $14 billion business mostly run by for profit companies.

We recently launched an Oklahoma City nursing home abuse lawyer website. We've broken the site down into the following sections:

• About & Different Types of Nursing Home Abuse


• Signs of Nursing Home Abuse & Neglect


• Nursing Home Resident's Rights


• Nursing Home Abuse Frequently Asked Questions


• Oklahoma City Nursing Home Abuse Lawyer Blog

According to Tulsa's KTUL, elder abuse is on the rise in Oklahoma. 

The article lists financial, physical, and even sexual abuse.  The article tells the story of Nate Waters.  He was paralyzed at the age of 19.  He's since lived in three different nursing homes.  He reported abuse at his nursing home, only to have one of the caregivers tell him to stop being a snitch. 

He's now helping nursing home patients by educating support workers. 

One of the biggest problems we see with nursing home abuse is that it is often unreported.  That's why it's so important to pay attention to your family members that are in homes.  Things to look for in potential nursing home neglect/abuse cases:

• Has the person started acting different?
• Has their condition drastically changed?
• Do they have any bruises or welts?
• Has their been any unusual weight loss or complaints of dehydration?

One of the most common types of nursing home abuses we see are bedsore cases.

Bedsores develop on the skin where circulation is low. They are also referred to as pressure sores (or ulcers) and decubitus ulcers. The most common area for bedsores to occur is the coccyx (the buttocks).

Think: if someone is sitting/laying in bed constantly and moving very little, where is the most pressure? Bed sores can be prevented in nursing homes if the patient is rotated and turned frequently.

Here's a picture from a nursing home abuse case we had a year ago (the pressure sore here is on the leg. I'll spare you the pictures from the coccyx):

The Tulsa World reported this week a Mannford woman is suing for wrongful termination after she reported nursing home abuse and neglect of facility's residents. 

Some of the disturbing parts of the article:

"Mrs. Harris observed a male resident who had been left in his own waste for so many hours that he had feces caked on to his leg from his hip to below his knee, and had wet himself at least one time," the petition said.

[S]he saw the man sitting in his waste and reported it to her supervisor, the head nurse and two nurse's aides. Her supervisor sprayed deodorant in the man's room to cover the smell. The aides said they would leave him for the next shift.

"Two and a half hours later, he was still sitting in his own waste," Harris said. "He couldn't say nothing. I would always talk to him. He would just light up when I went to clean his room. It's heartbreaking when you see a resident not being taken care of."

[A]n elderly woman paralyzed from the waist down was left in her own waste, Harris said. She rolled out of the bed and into the hallway to get someone to change her soiled garments and the nurses "just laughed at her," Harris said.

Harris reported each instance of neglect or abuse to the facility's staff. But once the staff learned she intended to seek the advice of her husband, Jerry, a retired private investigator known for exposing elder abuse, she was fired, the petition said.

Note that Mrs. Harris was only an employee of the nursing home for 3 months!

Today's Oklahoman asks:

Do you have a loved one in a nursing home? Have their rates gone up recently to help offset a shortage in Medicaid coverage?

Apparently an article will follow detailing the rising costs of nursing homes (and the shortage of Medicaid funding).


Clayton Hasbrook is a nursing home abuse attorney in Oklahoma City. He also writes on a variety of personal injury topics.

Care Living Center in Edmond has lost its certification and federal funding leaving more than two dozen of it's residents searching for a new home.  The date for federal funding to stop is May 27, 2009.  The residents will have 30 days to find new homes. 

The Oklahoma State Department of Health cited the nursing home for 'immediate jeopardies'; believing that "there is an imminent danger to the health, safety, and welfare of the residents." 

The Health Department's inspectors found one resident with 17 pressure ulcers who was not receiving appropriate treatment ordered by a physician. 

Other examples of nursing home abuse at the Center:

• Some of the residents were not being turned or cleaned
• Some of the residents were not always fed (Some had severe weight loss)
  
• Some residents had not received assistance to eat properly 
• No one to answer residents' call lights
  
• Nursing home staff members were not trained appropriately
• Two patients had wandered from the facility before being found blocks away
• Nursing home employees were not following doctor's orders to care for medical problems

Oklahoma County District Attorney David Prater stated this week that Oklahoma nursing homes should allow families of nursing home residents to put video cameras into the residents' rooms.

Prater asked, "If they're above-board and fully staffed and take care of the residents, what do they have to hide?"

The executive director of the Oklahoma Association of Health Care Providers stated that there's no law against it, but a camera "in more cases than not is used to sue a nursing facility."

Site note: The director obviously has a financial incentive to make it harder to prove a nursing home abuse case. Why would the defendant nursing home/insurance company want proof of the abuse? 

Today's U.S. News & World Report ranks the 10 worst states for top nursing homes.  Oklahoma nursing homes ranks third on their list.  The rankings are based on the federal government's ranking system of top nursing homes.   

Today's Washington Post has an article detailing a new law former-president George Bush signed near the end of his term.  The law "designates state inspectors and Medicare and Medicaid contractors as federal employees, a group usually shielded from providing evidence for either side in private litigation."  The law has the effect of forcing plaintiffs to go to greater lengths to get this needed information.  Curiously, the law was signed into effect without any congressional debate or public knowledge. 

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services recently released its nursing home "5-Star" ranking system.  The system allows users to search by nursing home name, zip code, city, state, and county.  According to medicare.gov, Oklahoma has five 5 star nursing homes. 

Here's a link to the ranking system: Nursing Home Compare.  This is helpful information considering there were more than 661,000 Oklahomans older than 60 in 2007.  There's also troubling news though:

• In Oklahoma, during fiscal year 2003, Adult Protective Services investigated approximately 16,000 reports of abuse, neglect, self-neglect, exploitation, and verbal abuse of vulnerable adults. Of the cases investigated, well over half (61%) were confirmed.
• Sixty-four percent of the cases in 2003 involved self-neglect. Another 14 percent involved caregiver neglect, and 13 percent involved financial exploitation

            (National Center on Elder Abuse)