Nursing Home Abuse Report » Types of Nursing Home Abuse » Elder Care Fraud
Signs of Elder Abuse
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Medication, diseases and illness make it difficult to detect signs of elder abuse.
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Nursing Home Fraud
Elder care abuse and fraud is more common than you think.
Elder care fraud occurs in any number of ways: Unethical doctors, nurses, hospital personnel, and other healthcare providers duplicate billings for the same medical service or device; over medicate or under medicate, provide inadequate care by poorly trained, poorly paid, or insufficient staff or crowding at the elder care facility.
Even though there are laws in place purported to improve the quality of life in nursing homes, inadequate care in nursing homes is still very common, particularly in the large for-profit corporations that run nursing nationwide home chains. With 1.7 million elderly and disabled nursing home patients in over 17,000 facilities, the problems, as the population ages, continues to grow with more neglect, abuse, and fraud.
Examples of healthcare fraud violations include being critically understaffed where on dozens of occasions only one licensed nurse was assigned to an entire facility and at times, the nurse on duty was not trained to administer intravenous fluids which placed residents in jeopardy.
Reports indicate residents often could not get services or supplies from outside vendors because the nursing home had not paid its bills. Even local utility companies threatened to shut off services to nursing homes not making payments to the tune of thousands of dollars.
Another problem with nursing home fraud is staffing: Unfortunately nursing assistants which are responsible for the bulk of the work are the least trained, lowest paid, and most over worked employees in nursing homes. Their job description requirements include feeding and bathing patients, assisting them in and out of bed, helping continent residents to the bathroom, cleaning and changing the diapers of incontinent residents, repositioning patients at risk of developing bed sores, performing range of motion exercises on residents to prevent painful contractures of the hands and feet, helping residents to walk, and providing other personal assistance to the residents in regard to their everyday living.
Elder care residents, their families, and/or the government are paying a lot of money for the lowest common denominator of care.
Is your loved one the victim of nursing home fraud and abuse? Find out what you can do about it and where to get help. Contact an elder care lawyer about your options.
Reporting Abuse
If you are unsure where to report a case of elder abuse, you can contact an attorney specializing in elder law who can help you with the reporting.
Medicare Eligibility for Nursing Home Care
Medicare will cover nursing home care only if the patient receiving the care needs skilled nursing.
Nursing Home Abuse
Abuse can be physical, emotional, financial and sexual. More ...