Articles Posted in Nursing Home Abuse & Neglect

Two persons have been confirmed dead in a fire at a nursing home in DeKalb County. An arrest has already been made in the incident, and Atlanta nursing home abuse lawyers have also learned that the facility owner had likely been operating the home without a license.

The house in Stone Mountain had about 7 or 8 residents living at the facility.

One person died of injuries at the scene, while the other one was taken to hospital and died later from severe burn injuries. At least 4 other people suffered injuries, including mild burns and smoke inhalation. At least one resident has confirmed that he escaped burn injuries by jumping out of his first storey window.

An unusual murder at a nursing home in Massachusetts is grabbing the interest of nursing home attorneys around the country. Does the murder of a 100-year-old patient at an elder care facility by her 98-year-old roommate qualify as grounds for neglect by staff?

The incident occurred at a nursing home in Massachusetts. The victim, Elizabeth Barrow and was found strangulated in her bed in September this year. Indicted in her death is Barrow’s roommate, 98-year-old Laura Lundquist. Lundquist will likely not stand trial, and has been ordered by a judge to undergo a competency evaluation.

According to the victim’s son, Scot Barrow, his mother had told him that she had been frequently threatened and harassed by Lundquist. Scott was concerned enough about these threats to bring them to the notice of the nursing home authorities. However, his concerns were shot down by staff who said that the roommates got along just fine.

The Associated Press has a shocking report about the manner in which spare beds at nursing homes around the country are being filled by mentally ill patients, thus exposing the facility’s elderly patients to assaults and abuse.

Across the country, deplorable conditions at mental health institutions have been responsible for the closure of these facilities. Besides, the mentally ill over the past few decades, have benefited from better treatment and more effective drugs which have also played a part in the closure of several of these facilities. This has meant that there are insufficient beds for the mentally ill, and many of them have been shifted to nursing homes instead. In these elder care facilities, these mentally ill patients who suffer from schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and other serious mental conditions are made to share rooms with weak and sick elderly residents, most of who are above 65 years of age. What makes the problem worse is that the mentally ill patients are much younger, and therefore stronger and healthier than their geriatric roommates. This has given rise to a potentially dangerous situation in which the elderly are at risk of violent assaults and even sexual abuse at the hands of the mentally ill.

There is no official data on how many of such assaults on the elderly by their mentally ill roommates have taken place, but numerous cases have been reported. In one instance, in 2003 a mentally ill woman at a nursing home in Hartford, Connecticut, set fire to the nursing home she was living at. Sixteen residents were killed n the inferno. The woman was judged incompetent to stand trial and was committed to a mental institution. There have been other instances of assault, including beatings and rapes of elderly residents.