A “very busy” nurse mistakenly administered a dose of oxycodone that was 20 times too strong, causing the death of a short-term resident, according to a state investigation.The 53-year-old man died within a few hours of the incorrect dose.  His daughter said: “My dad should have walked out of that facility.”The family’s attorney said the nurse “administered 30 milliliters instead of 30 milligrams. …

A nursing home was fined $50,000 by state authorities after the strangulation death of its patient, who was strangled by the ties of his own gown.  His roommate called for help by pushing the call light but no help arrived for 15-20 minutes.  The aide who arrived to help found the patient unresponsive and not breathing on the floor at the foot of his bed.

A jury awarded $7.6 million to the son and estate of a nursing home patient who died from complications of a bowel obstruction. The case involved inappropriate medical staff at the facility when the 71-year-old began vomiting and complaining about his abdomen.  The only medical person there was a licensed practical nurse, who called an off-site physician assistant to ask whether to send the man to the ER, which was less than a half-mile away. When the physician assistant declined and o…

A recent study of data from all 50 states looked at “whether publicly available information about the quality of a nursing home is a good predictor of the level of satisfaction at individual homes.” Researchers found “a clear indication that satisfaction and quality are not the same things in nursing homes.”“Our results are very consistent with the notion that satisfaction is a different construct from quality, and it captures something different about the nursing home experience,” said the lead…

A patient’s family hid a camera in the nursing home room and what they discovered led to the arrest of two aides for physical and mental abuse of the elderly man.The family of the 89 year old man became concerned earlier this year and put a “nanny cam” in his room, said the sheriff’s office. Footage showed both physical and mental abuse, including smacking his dentures back in when he was having trouble keeping them in while eating.The aides also “got in his face,&quot…

A new study found that nursing homes which implement simple hand hygiene protocols like those used in hospitals saw significant drops in infection-related deaths as well as fewer antibiotic prescriptions needed. Annually, nursing homes report around 3 million infections, the leading cause of death. “Hand hygiene protocols have traditionally focused on acute-care settings. Our study is changing this narrative, underscoring that we can take a proven intervention practice and make i…