A medical technician at an Assisted Living was charged last week after she reportedly admitted to stealing prescription medication intended for a 92-year-old resident. The med-tech is accused of signing for about 16 hydrocodone pills in March and April, falsely logging them in the patient’s records and keeping them for herself, according to Police. The executive director of the facility told police she noticed “suspicious activity” by the employee on April 11 and questioned her.

A former employee is suing the company that owns and operate a long term care facility where she claims her employment was wrongfully terminated. The woman was employed as a caregiver at the defendant’s facility in June of 2010, according to a complaint filed in Circuit Court. The woman claims during her employment she became aware that a patient had suffered abuse by staff members in violation of state and federal regulations and reported the incident of abuse by placing a phone call to Adult P…

According to the Miami Herald,  safeguards once hailed as the most progressive in the nation have been ignored in a string of tragedies never before revealed to the public.The tragedies include blatant neglect and abuse of residents of the State’s many assisted living facilities. The incidents highlight a breakdown in the state enforcement system that has left thousands of elderly and mentally handicapped individuals to fend for themselves in dangerous and filthy conditions. The Miami Heral…

Employees of an assisted living facility struggled to keep track of a male dementia patient who wandered from the facility on many occasions.  The 75-year-old man was once found in a bank lobby. Months later, he wandered into a nearby condo complex and had to be escorted back. The elopement ended when the former Episcopal priest and social worker went missing and was found a week later floating face down in a nearby lake, his body ripped apart by alligators.

National healthcare officials unrolled an Obama administration initiative to save as many as 60,000 lives by reducing medical errors and patient complications after patients are discharged from the hospital. Eleven nationwide events were held to highlight the national Partnership for Patients, which enlists the support of hospitals, employers, health plans, doctors, nurses and patient advocates to “make the best care normal care for all patients,” said Rima Cohen, counselor to Health and Human S…

One state is seeing benefits from an experimental program designed to reduce falls in nursing homes. In 13 nursing homes across the state nurses and aides are expressing amazement at changes they see in more than 650 residents who are stretching, standing, squatting and lifting weights. The project which kicked off in October aims to reduce nursing home falls by 10 percent.