Concerns about quiet changes to the federal nursing home regulations have been raised as more people learn about the changes.The American Health Care Association, which represents the nursing home industry, sent letters to the President and to Thomas Price, who was then the Health & Human Services secretary, calling for modifications of the nursing home regulations. Subsequently, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), charged with oversight of the nursing home industry, publ…

A 94-year-old Santa Rosa woman filed suit against the owners of her assisted living facility says they left her and other patients in their beds during the October wildfires which raged all around them.Another lawsuit against the same facility for the incident claims that employees left behind at least 1/3 of the almost 70 patients, including some with dementia. Family members did help all the patients escape before the facility burned to the ground. For more, read the story.

The Indiana Attorney General’s office alleges that the conduct of the owner of a licensed assistant living facility led to “years of significant health and safety issues” including a dead resident's body covered in cockroaches, mouse droppings on cooking surfaces, insufficient supervision, and no employees with first aid certification.“Every day or every other day we’d see an ambulance and a fire truck over there and everything, constantly,” said Zelda Armst…

Long term care providers recently were alerted to a new finding that trehalose, a natrually occurring sugar used as a food additive in hundreds of foods, could “fuel outbreaks” of a dangerous, sometimes life-threatening infection, Clostridium difficile (“C. diff.”).Trehalose is extracted from corn starch and helps feed certain strains of C. diff.

A male nursing home employee was charged with first-degree sodomy and second-degree elder abuse following an alleged incident where another employee walked in on the worker and a naked male patient at the nursing home.  The judge denied a lower bond request this week and also order Zachariah Reeves to submit a DNA test. For more, read the story. 

A nursing home paid multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars to settle a lawsuit accusing it of medicating residents to keep them in bed so they were easier to manage.The lawsuit alleged that the nursing home prescribed a female patient heavy doses of anti-psychotic and anti-anxiety drugs leading to a deterioration in her overall condition. Facility staff allegedly told her nephew she was given the medications “to keep her in bed.” According to the the U.S. Attorney's Office …