Petaluma Nursing Facility Sued for Elder Abuse, Neglect

 

Petaluma Nursing Facility Sued for Elder Abuse, Neglect

 

The family of a 90-year-old Petaluma woman is suing a local nursing care facility on charges of that she was denied appropriate care and neglected on a repeated basis, so much so that just month later she was sent to the emergency room with an infection she developed while at the facility.

According to the suit, filed Sept. 21 in Sonoma County Superior Court, the woman was admitted to Petaluma Health and Rehabilitation, a skilled nursing facility located at 300 Douglas St. In her short time at the home, the staff “repeatedly failed to perform basic wound monitoring, nutrition and hydration,” according to the suit, so that the woman’s ulcer condition worsened.

The nursing staff at the 98-bed facility engaged in elder abuse and reckless neglect by not carrying out basic treatments and assessments and by failing to develop and follow a nursing care plan for the patient, said Audrey Gerard, the family’s attorney.

“When my client was evaluating the facility for her mother, she was given documents that described the home as having experts in wound care, but while she was there wounds became huge and infected,” Gerard said. “The wound was so bad that she had to be taken to Petaluma Valley Hospital, which made a report with the Sonoma County ombudsman's office.”

Petaluma Health and Rehabilitation is owned by Evergreen Healthcare, which operates nursing homes throughout California, Oregon and Washington. A call to Evergreen’s corporate offices was not returned Wednesday or Thursday. But according to California’s Health Facilities Consumer Information System, the Petaluma facility has received dozens of complaints in recent years, most of them substantiated. These include complaints about not properly hydrating patients, not doing enough to prevent accidents and not providing proper diets.
A comparison of Petaluma Health and Rehabilitation with other California nursing facilities showed that PHR spent less licensed staff hours per patient than many other facilities in the state. For example, while the average California nursing home spent one and a half hours per a day per patient, PHR spent under an hour, according to Medicare.gov.

“Elder abuse comes in all forms,” said Gerard, the attorney. “It can be financial, it can be physical and it can be neglect by not providing proper care.”

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Thornhill Estate

121 Brisa Drive,

Palm Desert, CA 92211

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Looking for a place who cares?

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Hovley Care Services

40890 Hovley Court

Palm Desert ,Ca 92260

(760)346-3703

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Is Obama Jeopardizing Medicaid?

Is Obama Is Jeopardizing Medicaid?

Enlarge Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Registered nurses hold signs as they strike outside of the Mills-Peninsula hospital on Sept. 22, 2011 in Burlingame, California. Tens of thousands of registered nurses held a strike at more than thirty hospitals to protest proposed cuts to benefits.

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Registered nurses hold signs as they strike outside of the Mills-Peninsula hospital on Sept. 22, 2011 in Burlingame, California. Tens of thousands of registered nurses held a strike at more than thirty hospitals to protest proposed cuts to benefits.

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In one of its many attempts to get its budget deficit under control, in 2008 California decided to cut its reimbursement rates to medical providers for poor and disabled persons enrolled in the state's Medicaid program. The result was that providers began to cut back on services, and pharmacists stopped filling prescriptions because the reimbursements came to less than the cost of the drugs. California, for all intents and purposes, was no longer upholding the federal mandate to provide Medicaid patients with "meaningful access" to care. Numerous lawsuits were filed against the state to reverse the cuts, and they are now consolidated into Douglas v. Independent Living Center of Southern California, the first case the Supreme Court will hear today, on the first day of its new term.
As it stands, Douglas is no longer about Medicaid rates or "meaningful access," but whether Medicaid beneficiaries and providers have the right to sue the state to enforce federal Medicaid statutes — and, in a surprising move, the Obama administration has sided with California, with the Deputy Solicitor General arguing before the Court today that only the Department of Health and Human Services should be able to enforce compliance with Medicaid. "They want the prerogative of when and where to intervene in state conduct matters," says Sara Rosenbaum, a law professor and health care expert at George Washington University, venturing a guess as to the administration's motives. California's backers also worry about court-imposed payment schemes replacing state discretion, as well as a surge in litigation.
But the Obama administration's position is a big mistake. Not only would rolling back such private rights endanger patients and providers, it could also impede the administration's own agenda. Because the ability of the federal government to enforce its health care laws through HHS is limited, it often relies on private lawsuits to keep states in check. In fact, the success of the administration's signature policy achievement, the Affordable Care Act, could depend on exactly the kind of action it's trying to rule out.
OF THE 32 MILLION Americans the Obama administration's Affordable Care Act will eventually insure, almost half — 15 million — will gain insurance under a massive Medicaid expansion by January 2014. The impact of the ACA, in other words, depends on states complying with Medicaid requirements — the very laws Douglas could effectively end the ability of private citizens to enforce through legal action. Another scenario where you might see the ACA falter is if a state took over responsibility for running a health-care exchange, and then failed to comply with federal requirements in some way. A ruling against providers and beneficiaries in Douglas therefore "limits the options for enforcing the Affordable Care Act," says Timothy Jost, a law professor at Washington and Lee University School of Law. "At this point the assumption is that the states will implement it and that the federal government will enforce it. The possibility to enforce implementation [either through private actions or HHS] is a fall-back position. But in the future, particularly if Obama loses the 2012 election, it narrows options for making sure implementation goes through."

Even under a Democratic administration, however, leaving enforcement up to HHS is a disaster waiting to happen. That's because, historically, HHS has a middling record of enforcing Medicaid's rules. For instance, the California rate cuts that launched the lawsuit in question are still in effect, points out Rochelle Bobroff, Directing Attorney of the Federal Rights Project at the National Senior Citizens Law Center. "The federal government never goes to court over non-conforming state plans," says Bobroff. "They just don't do it." More importantly, HHS is largely limited to one, very poor enforcement mechanism: the ability to cut off all Medicaid funding to a noncompliant state. If the threat of a cutoff doesn't scare a state into compliance, following through would only end up hurting the Medicaid recipients HHS is trying to help. Under a president Bachmann or Perry and their HHS Secretary, says Jost, "you'd have a situation where [the ACA] was basically unenforceable with regard to the Medicaid expansion."

Moreover, the ACA is just one piece of the possible collateral damage from a ruling in favor of California. Under a broad ruling, a whole swath of federal requirements could be endangered. "Every state out there is waiting to see what happens in Douglas to cut access," says Rosenbaum. "The litany of what kind of bad state conduct could be unleashed is long because the only weapon against it is the risk of injunction. The theory that there's no right of action will carry over out of the Medicaid Act."

One area where states would likely begin to move in response to a victory for California is in cutting federal money — like Medicaid and Title X funding—that's currently directed to abortion clinics and Planned Parenthood. The ability of beneficiaries and providers to stop state laws seeking to defund clinics would likely be impeded, allowing backers of the proverbial "war" on abortion and contraception to score a major victory. And with an especially broad ruling, says Steven Shapiro, legal director for the ACLU, "there would be consequences for a wide-ranging variety for civil liberties and civil rights litigation [including] state and local immigration cases."
This all depends, of course, on if the state of California wins in Douglas, and then how broad the Court's ruling actually is. The poor tools at HHS's disposal are partly a result of the fact that the government has historically relied heavily on private actions to enforce federal laws. For this reason it seems unlikely that the Court will take away private citizens' cause of action altogether, as a broad ruling would overturn a large number of cases and go against decades of established jurisprudence. But on the other hand, a narrow ruling seems likely. "It's hard to be optimistic with 32 states and the federal government [on the other side]; this is going to be a difficult case to win," says Bobroff. "Given this Supreme Court and its hostility to plaintiffs," Jost notes, "it's depressing."

It's important to note that the Obama administration is taking a more moderate position and is asking the Court for a narrow ruling on the Medicaid Act alone. But its decision to back the state of California over private beneficiaries and providers is still baffling for heath care advocates and experts. Even a narrow ruling could impede the implementation of health care reform. "I have no idea what they were thinking, but it's a major disappointment," says Shapiro. "They went against their historic and the legally correct position." Indeed, when the Supreme Court was deciding whether to hear Douglas, the administration's position was that private actions were important to carrying out federal law. When the Court took up the case, however, the administration performed a remarkable about-face. "There's a huge amount riding on this case," says Rosenbaum, "and the ironies here are phenomenal."

We want you to feel like you are apart of the family

Come join us!

Ambroise Manor

7025 Mountain ave

Highland , Ca 92346

(909)864-2901

Your Parents Deserve the Best

Thornhill Estate

121 Brisa Drive,

Palm Desert, CA 92211

(760) 200-0291

Looking for a place who cares?

Well here we are!

Hovley Care Services

40890 Hovley Court

Palm Desert ,Ca 92260

(760)346-3703

We want you to feel like you are apart of the family
Come join us!
Ambroise Manor
7025 Mountain ave
Highland , Ca 92346
(909)864-2901




 Your Parents Deserve the Best
Thornhill Estate

121 Brisa Drive,
Palm Desert, CA 92211
 (760) 200-0291





Looking for a place who cares?

Well here we are!
Hovley Care Services
40890 Hovley Court
Palm Desert ,Ca 92260
(760)346-3703

 

 

 

 

Elder-care is about more than duty. It’s the law

For the mother, it was an assumed truth: When she got old, one of her kids would take her in. As far as her five children were concerned, however, it was never going to happen, though they didn’t say so to her face. Not that she was a bad mother (if anything she loved her offspring too intensely). But did they want a sweet, docile granny living in the spare bedroom? Far from it.

“She’s too difficult,” says her daughter, Barb, a retired schoolteacher in Windsor, Ont. “She argues about everything and I seriously could not take that. I would be a basket case.”
But when her mom was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, there was no question of Barb’s role. Despite every screaming match in her teenaged years, and every gritted-teeth conversation in adulthood, this was still her mother. Her siblings helped out but, ultimately, it was Barb, the eldest, who went to her mom's house nearly every day, listened to her grouching, and patiently explained, for the hundredth time, why she couldn't drive any more.
“There were days I absolutely hated going there,” she says of daily visits to her mother’s house. “It wasn’t something I wanted to do. But it was the right thing for my mother and for me.”
What do adult children owe their parents, and how far do those obligations extend? Socrates and Plato pondered the question, philosophers have long debated it. A dusty law – left on the books in every province except Alberta, dating back to the Depression when social supports for the elderly were scant – says the state can enforce a financial duty on children to their poverty-stricken parents. (A proposed law in China would go even further, ordering children to regularly visit elderly parents.) Even if your parents don’t sue you, the question of obligation – moral, emotional and financial – is one more Canadians will encounter in a society with two converging complications: an aging and longer-living population, and families with fewer children, many of whom live too far away to share the load.
Filial law, as Queen’s University law professor Nick Bala observes, is a “legal oddity,” one that’s been used rarely in Canada, for obvious reasons: Good luck attempting a pleasant Christmas dinner with a child you took to court over a few bucks a month. (Prof. Bala, who like many legal scholars believes the law should be repealed, also points out that elderly parents are far more likely to be supporting their struggling kids, not the other way around.) In a now-infamous court case in British Columbia, a 73-year-old mother named Shirley Anderson has been fighting in the courts for 12 years to get parental support in the form of a monthly cheque from her children. Like any similar divorce court matter, it’s full of vitriol – the kids were brats, their mother was derelict. Last week, the children named in the case went to the British Columbia Supreme Court to ask for the case to be dismissed.
Filial laws also exist in a majority of U.S. states, leading to a few controversial cases where nursing homes have tried to chase down adult children to pay their parents’ outstanding bills. But the cases may be more complicated than a monthly stipend for dear old dad: In 2001, an Ontario man was sentenced to six months in prison for failing to provide his father with the “necessities of life.” The court was divided on the ruling – the father was found living in filth on the ground floor in their shared house, but he had also refused to go to a nursing home, and often stubbornly rejected his son’s help.