It is important to visit family members in the nursing home. Many do not receive visits often enough. One woman asks in her blog for others to take the time as she does for her mother.

A nursing home patient is dead just weeks after a fall. She incurred several injuries due to her fall including cracked ribs and a fractured sternum. Just two weeks later, she suffered chest pains and was declared dead upon arrival at the hospital She was diagnosed with a pulmonary embolism to which her doctor stated she had an increased risk to contract the embolism due to her immobilization after the fall.

Nursing home facilities are finding ways to beat the system with self-reporting measures of their facilities. The number of nursing homes receiving a 4 to 5 star rating has risen from 37% in 2009 to 50% in 2013. The problem is a third of those same nursing homes are on a government watch list for violations of care and neglect or abuse issues.

Nursing homes are held to federal regulations for reporting nursing home neglect and abuse. In light of this 85% of nursing homes have reported abuse or neglect in 2012. There are other requirements for nursing homes such as maintaining policies and documenting support of the facilities’ compliance of federal regulations of notification of any crime or suspicion thereof.

A state Department of Health is noticing an increase in nursing home abuse due to tripling numbers of complaints from 2010 to 2013. The state released reports regarding the growing number of complaints and fact that they have doubled staffing to manage the complaints incoming. “It’s really disturbing to see the numbers of complaints going up,”said the director of the Vulnerable Adult Justice Project.

A bill was signed yesterday to put into effect the ability for nursing home complaints to be filed online. The state legislature will make it easier to report issues with nursing homes. It will also provide a more streamlined approach to identify any trends in nursing home incidents.