The U.S. Department of Justice has announced that Grace Healthcare LLC, a large nursing home management corporation, has agreed to pay $2.7 million to settle claims that they violated the False Claims Act by submitting Medicare claims for unnecessary rehabilitation services. The settlement resolves claims that the corporation submitted false claims in 10 different nursing home facilities from 2007 through June of 2011.

Last week a jury returned a verdict of wrongful death and elder abuse against the largest assisted living company in the nation. According to the Sacramento Bee, the trial has now entered the punitive-damages phase for Emeritus Corp, an assisted living company with annual revenue of $1 billion. The verdict comes after the family of an 82-year-old resident filed suit following her death five years ago.

A nurse who came forward last week claims she was fired from a nursing home for reporting what she believed to be abuse inside the facility. The nurse says she contacted state officials about an incident last fall regarding a 90-year-old resident who was left alone in her room screaming and crying for assistance to use the bathroom. When no one responded, the resident climbed out of bed, over four bed rails, into a wheelchair.

The family of a former nursing home resident who died following an altercation with another resident has sued the facility for neglect. The elderly woman was a resident in the facility’s Alzheimer’s unit. Following the resident’s death, the coroner determined that her death was caused by subdural and subarachnoid hematomas due to blunt force trauma because of a fall during an altercation with another resident.

Police have arrested a woman who investigators say stole pain medications from elderly dementia patients in a nursing home where she worked. The former nurse pleaded innocent to charges of prescription fraud last week. The woman was arrested in January after facility staff reported to police that they suspected morphine was being stolen from the facility.

A senior living facility resident died last week after a nurse at the facility called 911 for the resident, who was having trouble breathing, but refused to perform CPR. The 87-year-old woman was in respiratory distress after she collapsed at the facility.  When the nurse called 911, the dispatcher advised the nurse to preform CPR. The nurse responded that she would not preform CPR because the facility policy is to call for emergency services and simply wait with the patient for them to arr…