For a website with good information regarding nursing assistants, see www.nursingassistants.net
One of the things I thought was interesting was a listing of state statutes on CNA to resident ratios. There are very few that have such statutes. Here's the site: http://nursingassistants.net/2008/01/26/staffing-ratios-each-state/
As reported by USA Today, the Federal government has published a new nursing home rating guide. The ratings are measured on a 1 to 5 star system.
Out of 112 nursing homes in Maine, 9 (or 8 percent) received the lowest rating of 1 star, while 26 (or 23%) received the highest rating of 5 stars.
| To read more about the rating system or to research individual nursing home ratings, go to: | |
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2008-12-18-nursinghomeinside_N.htm
Ben Gideon recently published an article on how to identify and evaluate a nursing home case involving pressure ulcers. Below is an excerpt. To read the full article, click here: http://www.bermansimmons.com/article_detail.php?id=67
Here’s the scenario. Susan is your long-time client. She is a pleasant woman in her fifties. One day she comes to see you and tells you that about eight months ago, she made the difficult decision to admit her mother to a nursing home. Before that, mom had been living independently in her own apartment. Mom was doing alright, but then suffered a minor stroke, fell and broke her leg. After that, she could no longer get around or to the bathroom by herself and needed help rehabilitating her leg. Her heart condition was not life-threatening, but after the stroke, her mental health deteriorated and she was often confused and disoriented. She needed more care and supervision than Susan and her family could provide on their own. Susan located a facility that accepted Medicare and advertised “24-hour” skilled-nursing care, and she made arrangements for her mother’s admission.
Less than eight months later, Susan’s mother died as a result of cardiac shock triggered by a bacterial infection that spread to her bloodstream. After spiking a temperature, the nursing home transferred Susan to the local hospital. For the first time, Susan saw a baseball-sized gaping hole of rotting flesh all the way to the bone on her mother’s buttocks. This was determined to be the site of the infection that led to her mother’s death.
Susan was shocked. She had visited her mother almost every day, and, although her mother’s confusion continued to worsen, there were no signs of deterioration in her mother’s health until the abrupt end.
Susan comes to you now looking for answers. Her anger at the nursing home is exceeded only by her own feeling of guilt for placing her there. She wants to know if she can make a claim against the facility.
To answer Susan’s question requires an understanding of (1) what a pressure ulcer is and why it occurs; (2) the laws and regulations pertaining to pressure ulcers that apply to skilled nursing facilities; and (3) the facts that culminated in her mother’s death.
A recent study shows that elders with dementia are at much greater risk of hospitalization or death if they are prescribed antipsychotic medications. For more information, read the following articles:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/26/AR2008052601510.html
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601082&sid=aTJnSxKPZ0To&refer=canada
The American Association of justice recently released the second in a series of original research reports on the insurance industry, “Tricks of the Trade: How Insurance Companies Deny, Delay, Confuse and Refuse.” Following up on “The Ten Worst Insurance Companies in
You can read the report by visiting www.justice.org/insurance
The following was a 12/5/08 article from McKnight's . . .
December 05 2008
Hospitalization rates as a result of pressure ulcers have risen dramatically over the last 15 years, according to a report from the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
Hospital admissions for which pressure ulcers were either a primary or secondary diagnosis rose 80% between 1993 and 2006, according to the report. Primary diagnosis hospitalizations reached nearly 45,000 in 2006, compared with 35,800 in 1993, and secondary diagnosis hospitalizations jumped from 245,600 in 1993 to 457,800 in 2006. Those with a secondary diagnosis of bedsores were typically being treated primarily for pneumonia or other infections.
The death rate among secondary diagnosis cases was one in eight. Primary diagnosis patients fared better, with a one in 25 death rate, according to the report. Pressure ulcer hospitalizations also typically lasted more than twice as long and cost between $6,000 and $10,000 more per visit than most other hospitalizations, according to the report.
