Articles Tagged with Boston nursing home abuse

The aides and nurses at the Braemoor Health Center lacked the fundamental knowledge necessary to save the life of a dementia patient suffering a heart attack in their care. The facility also neglected to inform state officials of the death, initially saying it was because the man had no family. Later, it was revealed administrators feared “bad press,” as their parent company was already under scrutiny for two other deaths in Wilmington. oldhands2

State health officials released the 70-page report on their investigation more than a month after barring the facility from accepting new patients, fining it $200,000 and freezing its payments from Medicare – the bread-and-butter of any nursing home.

The report offers a scary glimpse into the day-to-day operations at Braemoor, owned by Synergy Health Centers in New Jersey. The report followed two surprise inspections earlier this summer following a tip-off regarding the two deaths, in March and in April. Those inspections revealed a host of problems. For starters, the staff in charge of caring for these elderly, frail patients had little-to-no staff training in basic life support care. Meanwhile, the machines staffers relied upon to provide emergency oxygen to patients suffering medical emergencies – those were empty. The emergency medical devices used to restore a regular heart rhythm to someone experience an active heart attack – those devices were defective. The alarms in place at each window and exit of the building to prevent dementia patients from wandering off-site – many of those were missing or not working.  Continue reading

Representing thousands of Massachusetts nursing home workers, members of 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East penned a letter to state lawmakers recently, urging them to fight back on Gov. Charlie Baker’s recent veto, which will cut millions in nursing home staffer salaries and benefits.nurses

Those cuts – some $17.2 million in all, according to the Boston Globe, are mostly going to affect low-wage workers. Originally, the state Legislature had approved $35.5 million for these workers. But then Baker, citing a substantial financial setback caused by major tax revenue declines, prompted him to cut the allocated boost in half.

The union argued that not only was the pay raise not reliant on state revenue (instead leaning on nursing home user fees), but this kind of move might ultimately jeopardize nursing home patient safety.  Continue reading

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