Our nursing home neglect lawyers want to remind you that when you have a family member or loved one in a nursing home or long term care facility, it is incredibly important to make frequent and unannounced visits and to ask the nurses questions about your loved one’s care. With high turnover rates and a large number of residents, certain elements of proper care do slip through the cracks and mentioning to the nurses things that are unique to your loved one could end up being the difference between life and death. Dietary restrictions and allergies are things that you should mention multiple times.
Man Supposed to be on Restricted Pureed Diet Chokes to Death
After a state Health Department investigation, a Minnesota nursing home is being held responsible for the death of 82-year-old Keith H. Johnson. The nursing home served Johnson a tuna sandwich on December 13, 2010 which was in violation of his doctor’s orders to only eat pureed food because of his history of eating too fast and choking. The man, who suffered from Alzheimer’s, was then left unsupervised and began to choke on the sandwich. An employee noticed that he was trying to cough and then became unresponsive and was not breathing. There were two failed Heimlich maneuver attempts to restore his breathing before Johnson was taken to the hospital. He died six days later from lack of oxygen to his brain and cardiac arrest.
The state is saying that the facility failed to instruct their staff about Johnson’s dietary requirements and offered little or no supervision for him and the other residents who are at a high risk of choking. The state also claims that it is this negligence that caused Johnson’s death. One of the staff members that was involved in the incident told officials that she had seen Johnson eating sold foods in the past “so she thought the resident could eat regular consistency food.”
Rachel Tuenge, the facility’s director of nursing, said “We regret the tragic incident that occurred. We investigated the incident fully on the day it happened and made the necessary changes in our policies.” The home has improved their supervision of high choking risk residents while eating and has educated their staff on the procedures and acceptable foods for these residents.
Nursing Home Neglect Lawyers in New Jersey and Philadelphia
If your loved one is currently a resident of a nursing home or care facility, pay attention to the quality of equipment and nursing staff. If you are worried that the care they are receiving is negligent, abusive, or inadequate, one of our professional nursing home neglect lawyers can help. 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.
At the end of October the police went to the son of 74-year-old Carol Brown’s home to find her unresponsive and living in deplorable conditions. The paramedics rushed Brown to the hospital but she died several days later. According to the officers who entered the home, they described Brown as “a rotting corpse that was still breathing.” The rescue crews had to pry her from the leather recliner because her legs had become fused to the chair. Court documents also revealed that she was sitting in her own bodily fluids and waste with a swollen ankle wound with maggots inside. According to Brown’s daughter Laura Sanders, the doctors told her “There were sores on her back the size of a man’s fist.”
Medical malpractice attorneys have traditionally believed that the use of electronic medical records would actually decrease the number of medical mistakes and other prescription errors. With the increase in technology, medical malpractice attorneys thought that doctors and nurses would be better equipped to avoid preventable mistakes and injuries and reduce the potential for civil lawsuits. It is easy to see why people thought that better technology would help healthcare providers avoid unnecessary medical malpractice. Doctors, who are notorious for poor handwriting, would not have the same problems communicating data to others in patient charts, the equipment could monitor drug prescriptions to avoid dangerous mixtures, and hospital workers could be alerted easily of particular patient conditions without the hassle of digging through charts. However, many studies are now showing that the expected benefits of the new healthcare technology are not coming to fruition as fast as expected, if at all. The Institute of Medicine has also highlighted numerous dangers that could lead to malpractice and cause patients severe injuries. The report stated “although the magnitude of the risk associated with health IT is not known, some examples illustrate the concerns. . . Dosing errors, failure to detect life-threatening illnesses, and delaying treatment due to poor human-computer interactions or loss of data have led to serious injury and death.”
Peggy Ballinger, a 55-year-old former care provider at the Alois Alzheimer Center, is facing charges after being accused of stealing pain medications from her Alzheimer’s patients. She is being charged with 
Brian Watt, a 29-year-old sex offender and former certified nursing assistant at the facility, was arrested on September 9. He was charged with 
Sandy Pasch originally wrote the bill in an attempt to disallow courts to consider healthcare provider’s apologies, but since the bill became more expanded, she elected to vote against the bill. Pasch, a nurse, was quoted as saying,
Richard Lee Wallace, 57, is standing trial this month for charges of elder abuse and neglect of an incapacitated adult resulting in death. Paramedics found his 86-year-old mother, Elise Wallace, dead in the home they shared on April 18. They found her body on the couch of the messy home covered in maggot-filled bedsores, gangrene, and surrounded by hundreds of flies. The paramedics testified that she had been dead no more than an hour when they arrived. The cause of death was determined to be a 
According to a wrongful death lawsuit filed by Diane Hallman, her mother’s death was the result of neglect by the Regent Care Center where the elderly woman was living. Rachel Mohr, 78, was found on March 4 yelling for help on the floor next to her bed. The lawsuit says that Mohr was put back in bed after she suffered head trauma and bleeding. “She was neurologically alert, coherent and in severe pain. She was placed back in bed and was later discovered nonresponsive,” the lawsuit claims. She was taken to the hospital where she died from the severe and fatal neurological injuries she suffered during the fall.