Chicago Nursing Home Abuse Attorney Blog

I've written about negligence as someone doing something unreasonable. While neglect may be planned, in practice it is often a failure to do something. Abuse, on the other hand, generally involves someone acting to hurt someone else. It's a broader area than neglect and some kinds of neglect fall within its definition.

Abuse is when someone harms someone else. This damage can be physical or emotional. Nursing homes have become centers of abuse because the people entrusted to them cannot defend themselves and the homes may not be able to control underpaid and uncaring employees.

How many of us can relate stories like that of the man, suffering early Alzheimer's, whose wife resolves that, though he is in a nursing home, she will do everything she can to preserve his dignity. She provides him with nice clothes and makes sure he has pictures of his kids and a few dollars in his pocket, only to find that everything with any potential value disappears within days, if not hours. Theft is rampant and, in the end, all she can do is bring him clothes from the Salvation Army Thrift Store and try to control her frustration and indignation.

Then there are stories of sympathetic nurses or aides who warn relatives of persons entering a nursing home or a hospital to take home anything they have of value because otherwise it will surely disappear.

We even know of a computer whiz who, after finding that his mother's belongings were gone from her nursing home room, rigged hidden cameras and caught the culprits - or at least some of them.

Illinois, as well as the other 49 states, have enacted laws that make elder abuse felonies; they make physical abuse and financial exploitation crimes.

Physical abuse may include beatings, sexual attacks and being forced to swallow food or medicine. Here is where neglect can fall in, when a caretaker who doesn't care fails to feed or dress patients, or to keep them clean.

Mental abuse may occur when someone humiliates, insults or threatens patients, or denies them the dignity of making even simple personal choices, such as whether to get out of bed or when and what to eat.

Financial abuse can be theft of belongings or forcing patients to turn over funds or include someone in their wills.

Why is there nursing home abuse? Understaffing and using under-qualified and poorly paid employees, high-pressure work environments and a lack of proper training have all been blamed. Provisions in the federal Nursing Home Reform Act lay out expectations and requirements for every home that receives federal funds; these facilities are monitored by Medicare as well as state agencies.

Regulators, however, can only do so much, as evidenced by nursing home ratings that drop from above average to dangerously below average from one annual inspection to the next. Inspectors need the support of family members who are looking after a loved one, and family members may have to turn to an attorney to sort through the complications and make sure the law is enforced.

Staying alert may be difficult, but successfully fighting nursing home abuse can at least provide some satisfaction in caring for a loved one - which is, at best, difficult.

Michael Kosner, President
The Kosner Firm Chtd.

The mother of a friend of ours is in a nursing home in a northern Chicago suburb. She's 95, and she doesn't always remember very well. She's reverted to her native Eastern European language for conversation but, all things considered, she's doing pretty well. Plus, she is blessed with caring and attentive sons who visit her regularly and look out for her well-being.

And that's a very good thing. It keeps her doctor and the nursing home alert.

While nothing serious is wrong, there are little problems and these offer some cautions about what to look for if you have a loved one in a nursing home.

Currently, this woman (let's call her Hannah) can't hear. The problem is ear wax, something easy enough to cure.

Hannah's son (let's call him Sam) says the problem has been building up for several weeks. He and his brother have asked the doctor several times to remove the wax. She's been reluctant, saying there wasn't a problem. She even told him recently that there's no problem. "I saw her yesterday and she heard me fine," Sam quotes the doctor as saying, "She even responded in English."

That would be fine, but Hannah hasn't responded to anything in English for more than a year.

And the day after the doctor says she talked with Hannah, Sam's brother called him to say her hearing was worse. "She can't hear at all," Sam's brother said. Perhaps the wax massed up overnight.

Finally, the doctor said she would remove the wax and set a date more than two weeks off for the sons to bring Hannah to her office. The brothers decided this was unacceptable and made arrangements with another doctor who would take care of the problem much sooner.

They're doing a good job of watching out for their mother.

As to the doctor, she was caring for Hannah before she went into the nursing home. In fact, though she is not employed by the home, she recommended it to the family and makes weekly rounds there to see her patients.

Now, however, she seems to have lost interest. In fact, Sam now realizes, there were signs of potential problems more than a year ago - red flags that might have suggested looking for a new doctor then.

Hannah developed bed sores - one on her heel and one on her back - and was hospitalized so they could be treated. They were relatively minor, healed and Hannah went back to the home.

The doctor, however, had a different idea; she suggested hospice.

"What was that all about?" Sam wonders. "Sure, my mom is 95, but the bed sores weren't serious. She wasn't ready to die, and here we are a year later and she's doing fine. The doctor is a nice woman, but she was willing to give up on her."

And now, over a simple matter of removing ear wax, the doctor still seems to be saying, "Why bother?"

That's not something we want to hear when it comes to someone we care about.

Michael Kosner, President
The Kosner Firm Chtd.