Government officials announced this week that Medicare officials need to do more to stop doctors from prescribing powerful psychiatric drugs to nursing home dementia sufferers. Antipsychotic drugs were designed for people suffering from schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. However, they are also given to hundreds of thousands of elderly nursing home patients to control aggressive behavior related to dementia.

According to the state attorney general’s office a mentally disabled nursing home resident was hit on the head several times by an aide at the facility. After the incident, the aide’s supervisor allegedly tried to cover up the incident. Both have plead guilty to misdemeanor charges relating to the abuse and the cover up.

According to a new study by the University of California- San Francisco (UCSF), the nation’s largest for-profit nursing homes deliver significantly lower quality of care than non-profit and government-owned nursing homes. The study is the first to focus solely on staffing and quality at the 10 largest for-profit nursing home chains. Researchers found that the most serious problems occur in the largest for-profit chains.  One author of the study, Charlene Harrington, RN, PhD, said, “the top …

A nurse admitted last week to diluting morphine solutions at a nursing home. The plea deal could send her to prison for three years, according to federal prosecutors. The 25-year-old nurse also must surrender her nursing license and never work in the health care industry again.

According to authorities, one person has died after a power outage struck a nursing home and backup generators failed. A spokesman for the electricity company says 37 patients on ventilators were taken to hospitals from the nursing home after the power outage struck early Sunday. The patient who died had a do-not-resuscitate order in place at the time of the outage.

Three former employees of one nursing home where maggots were found on a patient have sued the nursing home and its parent company claiming they were wrongfully fired for reporting patient abuse and neglect at the facility. The three employees worked as nurse’s aides at at the facility and were involved in a state investigation into the discovery of maggots in a patient’s genital area last summer. The lawsuit also claims the facility tried to prevent employees from participating in the investiga…