Laws on the Books Concerning Nursing Home Abuse in Tennessee & Nursing Home Abuse Statistics in NC
January 2nd, 2012 | 
Author: Abuse violations include physical, emotional and sexual abuse, as well as neglect. According to a 2001 Congressional Report, one in three U.S. nursing homes have been cited for abuse. These types of violations are especially insidious since elderly and disabled residents are unable to protect themselves from an attack. In many cases, they are not even able to communicate the abuse they have suffered to their family members, and hence they have neither recourse against nor protection from future abuse.
What is being done to protect Tennessee residents from falling victim to this kind of abuse? First, there are a number of laws on the books in Tennessee. For example, all staff must pass a criminal background check and all nursing homes are subject to annual or more frequent inspections by the department of health. Furthermore, Tennesseans are protected by national nursing home laws, such as the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Nursing Home Reform Act.
These two laws mandate, among other things, that patients must be given freedom and must receive respect for their persons, and their personal property and possessions.
If you suspect that you or a family member has been the victim of abuse or neglect, you can report the incident via state agencies such as the Tennessee Department of Health. The health department has licensing oversight for nursing homes and can revoke a home’s license if it is found to be in severe violation of state and national law.
In addition to reporting the incident to the state agency, you should also contact a local lawyer experienced with cases of nursing home abuse and neglect in Tennessee. Your Tennessee nursing home abuse lawyer will work with you on filing your claim with the state authorities, will advise you on the variety of legal issues, and will advocate for you as you seek monetary compensation for the neglect and abuse you or your loved one experienced.
Families in North Carolina and around the country turn to nursing homes to provide care and attention to their elderly loved ones. But all too often families’ expectation for professionalism, kindness and compassion is replaced with a shocking reality: abuse.
Abuse violations are a serious concern in nursing homes across the United States, and North Carolina facilities are no exception. These types of violations are particularly grievous since elderly and disabled residents are unable to protect themselves from an attack. In many cases, they are not even able to communicate the abuse they have suffered to their family members, and hence have neither recourse nor protection from future abuse.
According to a 2001 Congressional report, more than 9,000 nursing home abuse reports were filed in the two-year period between January 1999 and January 2001. Of these 9,000 reports, more than 2,500 were severe enough to place residents in immediate jeopardy of death or serious injury. Reported types of abuse include sexual, physical and verbal.
Nursing home neglect is another significant area of abuse, and can range from failure to provide medications according to the doctor-prescribed schedule to withholding food and even water from patients. Dehydration and death have occurred as a result of this type of neglect.
Also according to the Congressional report, which was spearheaded by Representative Henry Waxman (D-CA), the number of nursing homes that is cited for abuse is increasing, and has been every year since 1996. For example, the number of nursing homes cited for abuse during annual inspections more than doubled between 1996 and 2000.
While these national statistics are appalling, of even greater concern are the incidents of unreported abuse. In fact, officials believe that abuse is grossly underreported; some experts even say that the majority of abuse incidents go unreported. At particular risk are nursing home patients without the mental or physical faculties to be aware of — or even to articulate — the abuse they are suffering at the hands of their supposed caregivers.
Nationwide, one-third of the U.S.’s 1,600 nursing homes were cited for an abuse violation that had the potential to cause harm or death. This heart-wrenching statistic has devastating consequences for a state like North Carolina, which has over 37,000 of its residents living in nursing homes, according to a census conducted in 2002.
The reality is grim for North Carolina seniors, since one out of every three residents over the age of eighty-five lives in a nursing home. Given the national rates of nursing home abuse, North Carolinians are undoubtedly at risk. If you or a loved one has been the victim of nursing home abuse or neglect, please contact a qualified attorney. Your lawyer can help you to get the compensation you deserve for your mistreatment, abuse and neglect.
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H1N1 Widespread in 46 States as Vaccines Lag
Flu activity — virtually all of it the swine flu — is now widespread in 46 states, a level that federal officials say equals the peak of a typical winter flu season. Millions of people in the United States have had swine flu, known as H1N1, either in the first wave in the spring or the current wave.
Although there has been no exact count, officials said the H1N1 virus has killed more than 1,000 Americans and hospitalized over 20,000. The emergency declaration, which Mr. Obama signed Friday night, has to do only with hospital treatment, not with the vaccine. Government officials emphasized that Mr. Obama’s declaration was largely an administrative move that did not signify any unanticipated worsening of the outbreak of the H1N1 flu nationwide. Nor, they said, did it have anything to do with the reports of vaccine shortages.
“This is not a response to any new developments,” said Reid Cherlin, a White House spokesman. “It’s an important tool in our kit going forward.”
Mr. Obama’s declaration was necessary to empower Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of Health and Human Services, to issue waivers that allow hospitals in danger of being overwhelmed with swine flu patients to execute disaster operation plans that include transferring patients off-site to satellite facilities or other hospitals.
The department first declared a public health emergency in April; Ms. Sebelius renewed it on Tuesday. But the separate presidential declaration was required to waive federal laws put in place to protect patients’ privacy and to ensure that they are not discriminated against based on their source of payment for care, including Medicare, Medicaid and the states’ Children’s Health Insurance Program.
As a practical matter, officials said, the waiver could allow a hospital to set up a make-shift satellite facility for swine flu patients in a local armory or other suitably spacious location, or at another hospital, to segregate such cases for treatment. Under federal law, if the patients are sent off site without a waiver, the hospital could be refused reimbursement for care as a sanction.
A few hospitals, including some in Texas and Tennessee, have set up triage tents in their parking lots to screen patients with fever or other flu symptoms. A Health and Human Services official said no hospitals had requested a waiver. David Daigle of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said he had not heard of any hospital that has faced a surge of patients so large that it had to set up a triage area or a treatment unit off site.
In Chicago on Saturday, health officials began giving free vaccinations at six City College locations, and within hours hundreds of people were turned away because supplies had been exhausted. The city distributed 1,200 vaccines to each site, immunizing more than 7,000 people, said Tim Hadac, spokesman for the Chicago Department of Public Health. All but two of the sites ran out of the vaccine.
At Truman College on Chicago’s North Side, lines formed at 7 a.m., two hours before the doors opened. Mary Kate Merna, 28, a teacher who is nine months pregnant, arrived too late to get a vaccination. “I thought I’d be a priority being nine months pregnant,” she said. “You hear it’s a national emergency and it scares you.”
In Fairfax County, Va., officials had planned to have swine flu clinics at 10 different locations on Saturday. But the county did not receive the number of doses it requested, and was forced to offer the vaccinations only at the government building. People began lining up with camping gear the night before to get vaccinations.
Merni Fitzgerald, Fairfax’s public affairs director, said officials were aiming to administer 12,000 doses of the vaccine to those most at risk for serious complications from the H1N1 virus, mainly pregnant women and children 6 to 36 months.
But that did not stop some other high-risk patients. “I lied and told the doctors I was pregnant,” said Theresa Caffey of Centreville, who has multiple sclerosis and nurses her 11-week-old son, Joshua. “I’m religious. I don’t lie. But it’s not about me. It’s for my son. It’s safer for him if I have the antibodies.”
In a briefing on Friday, Dr. Thomas Frieden, the C.D.C. director, acknowledged problems with the vaccine production. “We share the frustration of people who have waited on line or called a number or checked a Web site and haven’t been able to find a place to get vaccinated,” he said.
Federal officials predicted last spring that as many as 120 million doses could be available by now, with nearly 200 million by year’s end. But production problems plagued some of the five companies contracted to make the vaccine. All use a technology involving growing the vaccine in fertilized chicken eggs; at most of them, the seed strain grew more slowly than expected.
The manufacturers are “working hard to get vaccine out as safely and rapidly as possible,” Dr. Frieden said. But since it is grown in eggs, “even if you yell at them, they don’t grow faster.”
Since last winter’s more isolated cases of swine flu, the expectation that the virus would return with a vengeance in this flu season had posed a test of the Obama administration’s preparedness. Officials are mindful that the previous administration’s failure to better prepare for and respond to Hurricane Katrina in 2005 left doubts that dogged President George W. Bush to the end of his term.
There is no overall shortage of seasonal flu vaccine — 85 million doses have shipped, and the season has not started. But there are temporary local shortages. The seasonal flu typically hospitalizes 200,000 and kills 36,000 nationwide each year. But over 90 percent of the deaths are among the elderly, while the swine flu mostly affects the young.