Pleasant Law Blog (Insurance Claims, Medical Misakes, and Nursing Home Claims)

Nursing Home Abuse: Accountability and Transparency

This article from The Frederick News-Post Online lays out some of the concerns about nursing home transparency and accountability. When nursing home and health care become such big business, executives and decision-makers who control budgets become removed from what is happening on the "front lines" in the actual nursing home. There seems to be an insulation from those realities, including what it takes to actually care for residents appropriately; and the focus tends to be on profit and the "bottom line" for the nursing home facilities. When nursing homes set up complicated schemes to avoid liability, the patients, and society, suffer. Accountability is important to Americans, and the nursing home should be no less accountable to those it harms through negligence than are regular people when they are negligent.

Nursing Home Transparency Act Resurfaces: Good Sign for Consumers and their Lawyers

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Congressmen Pete Stark (D-CA) and Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) just  introduced a revised version of the Nursing Home Transparency and Quality of Care Act of 2008  in the House of Representatives. Apparently this legislation is very much like the original legislation introduced earlier this year by Senators Herb Kohl (D-WI) and Charles Grassley (R-IA). However, this new version has some addtional provisions, such as a new quality assurance and quality improvement demonstration program. A more detailed report about this is available at http://www.mcknights.com/Nursing-Home-Transparency-Act-surfaces-in-House/article/118635/?DCMP=EMC-MCK_Daily

 

As I have stated in previous “blog” entries, many nursing home chains create complex webs of corporations and businesses. This is essentially done in order to avoid liability for nursing home abuse, neglect, injury and wrongful death; and related medical mistakes and malpractice. This law, if passed, will help bring to light the nursing homes’ true ownership structure so that they can be held responsible through lawsuits, when necessary, for hurting their patients and residents.

For more information about medical malpractice claims against doctors, hospitals, nurses, or other healthcare providers; or about nursing home claims against a nursing home or assisted living facility or rest home in North Carolina, contact my office toll free: 888-435-7156. We can arrange to meet with you at your home, some other place convenient to you, or in one of our office locations in Raleigh, Wilmington or Fayetteville, North Carolina.