A jury sided with the widow of an 88-year-old man who died of complications from an infected bedsore (also known as pressure ulcer, pressure sore, decubitus ulcer, and decubitus sore) the size of a baseball. The lawsuit was awarded last week against a company with nursing homes in eight states and a total of 4,000 beds. The lawsuit alleged that the nursing home hid the seriousness of the man’s bedsores from his family.

Silver Ribbon Week, an event held annually since 2008 to raise awareness of elder abuse, has been extended this year to span an entire month. The Board of Directors of the Schuylkill Elder Abuse Prevention Alliance decided to make the change to the 2012 Silver Ribbon campaign. “We wanted to spread it out the whole month.

An 84-year-old disabled man sought a restraining order in court last week against his former caregiver after telling a judge that he feared the woman was plotting to kill him. The caregiver and another individual were arraigned on a 65-count criminal indictment charging them with stealing the man’s assets and identity. In a petition for a restraining order, the alleged victim wrote that he was afraid of his former caregiver and that state adult protective service workers took him to a hospital i…

Department of Health officials in one state confirmed this week that they are in the process of revoking the license of one nursing home. The facility was also scheduled to lose its funding from Medicare last month. In April, the Department of Public Health investigated complaints from 10 out of 16 residents who were transferred out of the facility in the previous month.

Early Wednesday, a man with his face painted like a clown climbed through a nursing home window and  held a nurse at gunpoint as he demanded prescription drugs. The was able to escape with prescription drugs. A representative of the facility said all of the patients were in their rooms at the time of the robbery and were not involved.

The AARP has joined a class-action lawsuit accusing a nursing home of using powerful antipsychotic drugs without first receiving the consent of residents or their representatives. Lawyers from the AARP will serve as co-counsel in a case alleging that facility violated state regulations when they failed to ensure that a doctor had received a patient’s or family member’s consent before administering medications. The need to bring more attention to the overuse of antipsychotics in nursing homes att…