Accidents do happen, especially when it comes to the elderly and disabled. Unfortunately, more often than not, accidents in nursing homes and long term care facilities are a result of nursing home abuse from the staff or administrators. These accidents and cases of abuse and neglect are also usually not isolated incidents. If one resident is being abused, then there are probably others. Teays Valley Center, a Putnam County, West Virginia nursing home, was named as a defendant in two wrongful-death lawsuits filed in Putnam County Circuit Court on June 23, 2011.
Teays Valley Center Named Defendant in Two Wrongful Death Suits
In one of the suits, Bonita Tomblin is alleging that her late mother, Anoway Rose Smith, died as a result of the nursing home’s “systemic abuse and neglect.” Smith was a patient at the nursing home four separate times between August 25, 2009 and February 2010, and she died on February 23, 2010. According to the lawsuit, Tomblin says her mother suffered “skin breakdown, weight loss and falls” as a result of the neglect from the home. The lawsuit asks for damages for pain and suffering, mental anguish, inconvenience, physical impairment, loss of capacity for the enjoyment of life, aggravation of existing diseases and physical defects, medical expenses and for her death. It also requests punitive damages.
In the other lawsuit filed against the Teays Valley Center, Shirley A. Osburn alleges the nursing home’s abuse and negligence caused the death of her husband, John A. Osburn. Mr. Osburn was a resident at the home for only a week in July 2009. According to the lawsuit, during his time at the home, he “suffered serious injuries from a pattern of poor care, negligence and abuse” including “an injury of an unknown origin, that resulted in a fractured right hip, falls, dehydration, urinary tract infection and sepsis.” Mrs. Osburn is seeking damages for her late husband’s pain and suffering, anguish and for her husband’s death.
Nursing Home Abuse Lawyers in New Jersey and Philadelphia
If your loved one is currently a resident of a nursing home or care facility and you are worried that the care they are receiving is negligent, abusive, or inadequate, contact the Mininno Law Office for a free case evaluation. You may also call for a free consultation at (856) 833-0600 in New Jersey, or (215) 567-2380 in Philadelphia.
Right now, Kentucky state law only requires nursing homes and long-term care facilities to conduct name-based background checks for prospective direct care employees. With the grant and the new digital fingerprint scanning equipment, more in-depth criminal background checks will be available. Kentucky state law also does not order that the employees submit fingerprint checks, but the facilities will be expected to voluntarily participate in the grant program and officials are expecting high involvement. According to the Cabinet for Health and Family Services spokeswoman Jill Midkiff, the cabinet intends to pursue legislation that would require the fingerprint checks for caregivers employed in long-term care facilities.
Prentiss Center for Skilled Nursing Care, a MetroHealth nursing home in Cleveland, has been in the news recently because Steve Piskor captured the abuse of his 78 year old mother, Esther, on a hidden camera. The videos, which have led to both criminal charges and regulatory investigations, show nurse’s aides Virgen Caraballo and Giselle Nelson striking the patient’s face, violently throwing her into her bed and wheelchair, pushing her face into the wall, and repeatedly spraying her face with an unknown liquid that was later identified as perfume.
A woman entered the Lake Ridge Care Center in Buffalo, Minnesota on January 14, 2010 with a diagnosis of congestive heart failure and low potassium. She was prescribed two tablets of potassium three times a day to help keep her blood pumping through her heart. On January 23, 2010, the resident was sent to the emergency room because she was found unresponsive. Treaters in the emergency found a severely abnormal heart rhythm and extremely low potassium levels. The woman died later that afternoon. Her official cause of death was cardiac arrest. 
According to a report issued by the Minnesota Department of Health Facility Complaints Office, the man fell from his wheelchair on March 8th and suffered a “large hematoma, approximately four centimeters by three centimeters, on his left forehead.” He had bleeding that was putting pressure on his brain and depriving him of oxygen. The patient was examined 30 minutes after the fall, but no vital signs or neurological tests were done for at least three hours. Four hours after the fall, he was unresponsive and his vital signs were not stable. The nursing home transferred him to a hospital where he died two days later on March 10th. The death certificate states the cause of death as a “massive intracranial hemorrhage.”
An 82-year-old man from Illinois died this month at Heartland Healthcare nursing home. According to the police report, Irvin W. Brackett was found by nursing assistant Annette Payton at 10:30 p.m. on the floor with an oxygen tube and electrical cord wrapped around his neck and tied to an assistance lever that was hanging over his bed. Payton immediately called other nurses for help. They removed the constraints and began emergency resuscitation. An ambulance was called to help but nothing could be done and the nursing home called for the coroner at 12:16 a.m. Brackett was pronounced dead at the scene by the Knox County Coroner Mark Thomas. According to Thomas: 
On April 17, Grove called an ambulance to her home because she believed she was overdosing on drugs. While in the home, police found the elderly couple injured and in unsanitary conditions. The 77 year old husband was found in his urine soaked bed with blood and feces smeared on the bed and bed frame. Both victims were taken to the hospital. the husband was taken for facial bruises, broken ribs, and a partially collapsed lung, and his 82 year old wife was taken for a hand and wrist injury which she said she received when Grove pushed her wheelchair across the room and pinned her hand against the wall. The wife also told the police she heard Grove beating her husband on several occasions. The couple is bedridden/confined to wheelchairs, the husband has had part of his leg amputated, and the wife recently had hip surgery. The husband was in the hospital several weeks prior to this when he had to have one of his eyes surgically removed after a TV set fell on him, which his wife believes was an injury from Grove.
Sherrye Dianne Huff, the former administrator of the home, was arrested in May on five felony charges- three counts of theft and two counts of exploiting an elderly or disabled person- and one misdemeanor charge of theft for stealing from an Alzheimer’s patient. Donna Tower, the elderly man’s niece, said that the man would tell his family that someone was stealing from him but everyone brushed it off because of his Alzheimer’s. They later found out that he was telling the truth and Huff was taking his checks.
– Physical Abuse is the non-accidental use of physical force that may result in injury, physical pain or impairment of an elderly person. Physical abuse includes acts of violence such as hitting, beating, shaking, shoving, kicking and burning as well as inappropriate use of medications, physical restraints, depriving basic needs and force-feeding.