Elder Abuse & Neglect Law Blog : Seattle Elder Abuse Lawyer & Attorney : Stritmatter Kessler Whelan Coluccio Law Firm : WA Neglect, Insurance Bad Faith

Because I handle claims of Elder Abuse quite frequently, I like to stay abreast of developments in the communities in which I practice. The Senior Focus is a paper that published the latest issues facing Senior Citizens. They recently reported that financial abuse of senior citizens costs vulnerable adults up to $2.6 billion a year. 

The report, by the National Committee for Prevention of Elder Abuse, states that the abuse is often where you least expect it, from those taking care of the elderly. The Committee states the abuse is "most often perpetrated by family members and caregivers."

If you feel you may have been the target of elder financial abuse, you need to take action. Be wary of someone wanting you to place all of your financial assets with them as a trustworthy source if things go wrong. There are ways to structure your assets so that they can be used for your benefit without putting all your trust in one person. Additionally, if you do need to execute a power of attorney, place that power in more than one person. If you have two people who you trust, the second person can act as a check if the first begins to abuse their power over you. 

In addition, the article lays out other forms such abuse can take: marketing and repair scams, brokers, salespersons, loan officials. If something seems too good to be true, it usually is, and you should enlist the assistance of a friend, relative, or even an attorney to help you evaluate the deal. 

A common scam perpetrated not only on the eldery, but on anyone, involves "phishing". Phishing does involve fishing for your personal information through either the phone or the internet. If someone is asking you for your social security number or bank number, get their name and telephone number. After you have verified that they are who they say they are, you can call them back or visit in person. As a general rule, anyone that would call you and ask for such information is someone who shouldn't be getting that information in the first place -- if you're the one who called them, you probably already know the number you are calling is the right one.

$2.6 billion may seem like a drop in the bucket compared to things like defense spending and the annual budget, but the number should be $0. Learning the signs to watch for is the first step.

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King 5 is reporting that last night a 95-year-old woman was found dead outside of the Assisted Living Facility where she was a resident. Within a few hours of last seeing the woman, the Facility called police who initiated a search. She was found at the garden of a neighboring facility.

Wesley Care's CEO, Kevin Anderson, says this has never happened in the 26 years the facility has offered care and they are cooperating fully with authorities.

"We grieve with the family deeply over this tragic incident," he said. "We are extremely sorry that the incident happened. (Jensen's) family has our deepest sympathies."

Anderson told KING 5 News Jensen did not have a history of wandering away from the Center. The police report said staff told officers that earlier that evening, Jensen was found in another wing of the care center and had to be escorted back to her room.

If your loved one has a history of wandering, it is important the facility take action to prevent it. in this case, there is a question as to how alert they should have been given her recent evidence of confusion. However, in other facilities, the failure to care for the special needs of your loved ones is easily preventable. 

My prayers go out to her family.

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Medicare's website provides an excellent resource for those making the tough decision of whether and where to place a loved one in a nursing home. The Official U.S. Government Site for People with Medicare, www.medicare.gov provides useful and detailed information. If you are struggling with the decision, the site provides alternatives to a Nursing home for you and your family to consider.

Other useful information on the site includes:

• A nursing home rating system;
• An easy way to find medical equipment suppliers;
• A comparative tool for nursing homes;
• Medical nutrition therapy; and 
• Caregiver stories.

If selecting a nursing home is, indeed, the option you have chosen, follow the steps set forth on the website and take both the time and care to consider where you will being placing your loved one. This is an important decision, so take great care in obtaining as much information as possible. Look at ratings, heath inspection results, staff data, and quality measures.

Once you have narrowed your list of homes to a few, take the time to visit the homes, wander the hallways and to observe the nature of the care and the appearance of the residents. If possible, talk to families who have their loved ones at the home. Visit a few times, as each visit may provide you with new information. Some of the less reputable homes put on a facade for a sales visit. Only by coming in armed with information and taking the time to conduct a thorough investigation on your own can you break down that wall and see if the home is right for your loved one.

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Charles Bradley was 93 years old and a resident at Everett Care and Rehabilitation. I use the word "was" because Charles Bradley is no longer with us. He died as a result of neglect at the facility:

In court documents, attorneys for Bradley's family claim staff at the nursing home left a wound on the elderly man untreated for months. That injury, apparently the result of an undiagnosed penile cancer, purportedly contributed to his death.

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Often times, a claim for elder neglect also involves a claim for violating the standards of medical care. For instance, failure to properly treat a pressure sore usually involves the elder neglect of simply not treating it, but also the failure to adhere to standards of pressure sore treatment and prevention in the medical community. For the medical side of the claim, a claimant had to jump through hoops in order to sue the wrongful party. This meant that, without the benefit of any discovery, a claimant still had to get a doctor to agree that someone else acted below the standard of care. 

The Washington Supreme Court today invalidated the requirement of a certificate of merit. Because the opinion says so much about what justice is, what justice requires, and how we should treat impediments to justice, I have included it after the jump.

I cannot stress how much of a win this is for patients rights. Medical negligence claims are one of the hardest to prove because it involves judgement of a doctor, often in complex situations. Many times, if a hospital or doctor knows they screwed up, they will impede your pre-trial discovery, hindering your ability to obtain a certificate of merit. The striking down of the certificate of merit requirement removes this procedural roadblock and allows the case to move forward on an even keel with all other negligence claims. It removes a procedural hurdle that was a bar to so many negligence claims, regardless of whether the provider violated the standard of care. This will allow people to have their day in court -- to be heard.

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In a sad story, Ruston Health Care in Williamsburg, Illinois has been sued for trauma to one of its residents. The mentally disabled man was supposed to have his bed guard rails raised. The rails are there for a very specific reason, to keep the resident from falling out of bed.

Tragically, the staff at the nursing home failed to follow the instructions for the man's care, leaving the rail down. The man fell out of bed, striking his head hard enough to cause swelling the size of an orange. He also had blood in his urine. Visible blood in the urine (gross or acute hematoria, depending on the amount of blood -- acute being more severe) after trauma, such as a fall, can be a sign of damage to the upper or lower urinary tract. This can mean trouble with the kidneys, bladder, or urethra. 

Basically, this was no small fall.

The sad part is, the nursing home failed to act in the best interests of the patient by not disclosing the fall to hospital staff after blood was in his urine. Its bad enough that they put him in danger in the first place. But by failing to disclose the fall, they put him in danger of wasted time in trying to diagnosis the cause of the blood in his urine, as it can be caused by many non-trauma related issues. 

Its these simple things that the homes know they should do, but don't, that make me the most frustrated. How do you get a nursing home to stop understaffing? How do you get them to hire people qualified enough to follow the patient's care plan? Simple, you make them pay. Everything in a for profit business comes down to money. If it costs less to break the rules than to follow them, the for profit company will usually break the rules. But by making it hurt every time they endanger a patients life, these companies will start to realize that their bottom line is better off if they follow the rules. 

Of course, this can't be the only tactic used to reform this deplorable behavior, this putting of profit over people.

Its important that each of us, whether in the legal or medical community, get involved with other avenues that can help with reform. There are boards and commissions that deal with nursing homes, you can stay in contact with your local Health and Human Services Department to see what you can do to help.

Residents and their families can help to, by staying involved with the Resident and Family Councils at these places, documenting what they see and working with DSHS to improve the conditions for our loved ones.

I know I often sound like a broken record, but this is how we fix things -- by working together.

Many thanks to Levin and Perconti for bringing this story to my attention. 

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I often get asked by friends and family why I do what I do. You have to admit, its a big investment. Not only are you devoting 3 years of your time to law school and upwards of $100,000, you’re also slightly pigeon-holing yourself into a profession. I’m sure that can be said for just about any other profession, but with law, medicine, and I’m sure a few others, you lose that ability to bounce freely between careers. As you move through time, your practice generally becomes more focused and honed.

Simply put, I do it for the victims of negligence. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer ran an article entitled Dead By Mistake. The article explains the myriad of deaths that occur in the health care system simply by virtue of someone making a mistake. Now, I make mistakes, you make mistakes – everyone makes mistakes. Most of the time my mistakes are merely grammatical or spelling errors. It tends to happen when you type a lot. I’m sure one day I’ll make a mistake that cause harm to a client by causing trouble within their case. Unfortunately, for doctors, a mistake can often have tragic consequences.

“So what?,” you may say. “Everyone is entitled to make mistakes.” Sure, but that doesn’t mean that a person isn’t held accountable for their mistakes. The same powers that shout “PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY!” over and over when it comes to a reason why they shouldn’t lend a hand to a homeless man largely fall silent when the same topic is applied to professionals. You hear arguments that to hold these people accountable for their mistakes places a burden on the health care system.

Yes, I’ll admit, it does place a burden on the health care system. A burden of change. A burden to not allow simple mistakes to be made. A burden to innovate so that people don’t die at their hands when the death was entirely preventable. Unfortunately, the only way to press change, it seems, is to make the alternative hurt. If a hospital has to pay for its mistakes, it will invoke change when it becomes cheaper to go through the change than it does to continue paying claims. Hospitals are no different than Ford, making its cold calculated decision of gas tank deaths in the Ford Pinto. The only difference is, there’s not a video-clip with which we can be appalled.

Be appalled.

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Joseph Thurura, A 32-year old former assisted living employee has been found guilty of rape by Judge Richard McDermott in King County Superior Court. The rape occurred while the victim, Jaime - a 45-year-old woman who is blind and mute, was living at Integrated Living Services, an assisted living facility in Kent, Washington.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports:

Unable to identify her assailant, police took DNA samples from 11 men who had been in a position to have sexual contact with the woman. Prosecutors asserted that Thurura proved a 99.99 percent match to DNA recovered from fetal tissue.

McDermott's ruling means Thurura faces 6 ½ to 8 ½ years in prison. He is scheduled to be sentenced August 14 at the Norm Maleng Regional Justice Center in Kent.

An investigation showed that the facility had done criminal background checks, and the staff was informed as to signs of elder abuse. Unfortunately, the discovery of those signs did not translate into a check for rape until Jaime was found to be pregnant.

If your loved one is in a nursing home, be aware of the signs of abuse. Bruising, scratching, or behavior outside the norm for them could be indicators of a traumatic event. Seeing them early may help to prevent abuse or stop it early on. 

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New York Nurse Home Abuse Lawyer Blog recent reported on a $1,500,000 verdict for a nursing home resident fall. 

In July 2004, an Erie County jury awarded plaintiffs, Thomas S. Kolbert and the Estate of Victoria Poielski, $1,500,000 in damages in a lawsuit brought under the New York Public Health Law for nursing home negligence. The plaintiffs alleged that Ms. Poielski, an 80 year-old resident suffering from dementia, fell while unattended in her bathroom and suffered a fractured right elbow.

Apparently, the resident was left alone on the toilet for a three hour period. When no staff member came to her assistance, she tried to move from the toilet to her wheelchair and suffered a fall. Pressure sores (bedsores, decubiti) also developed on her heels after the fall.

While the verdict itself is not surprising, I still find that the post offers something important to talk about -- Nursing homes focusing on profits to such an extent that it places the residents of their homes in real danger.

In most businesses, when you want to cut down on overhead, one of the things you look towards is cutting staff. I can't tell you how many companies I've worked for where, as soon as you feel some financial tension, line level workers are cut, units consolidated, and so on and so forth.

But when you are talking about helping the elderly, the sick, those who can't care for themselves, cutting staff (or not hiring enough staff) placed people at peril. This poor woman was sitting on the toilet for THREE HOURS waiting for someone to help her back to her bed. It was either stay there and wonder if someone would ever come to help her, or try to make her way back. Though unsteady, she attempted it, resulting in her fall. 

Unfortunately, I have seen story on top of story of residents using their call lights and having to wait hours for assistance. Often it involves going to or coming from the bathroom, a basic human need. The failure to respond often results in falls, fractures, or soiling themselves. Those things can further lead to infections and decubitis ulcers (pressure sore wounds). Its sad to say that with just a few more staff, most nursing homes would be able to adequately respond to those lights and a plethora of injuries could be avoided.

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