From news accounts, it appears the man has confessed his crimes to police, at least partially. When police confronted Curtis about the allegations, he offered a "Hawaiian defense." He told authorities that he gave frequent hugs to people because it was part of his Hawaiian culture. He then volunteered that he was having problems with his girlfriend, and that he did touch one of the disabled woman's breasts and genitals.

From a civil liability standpoint it is an interesting case. Curtis himself would obviously be liable for sexual assault and battery, but probably unable to pay a civil judgment. The question is, would the home be liable? Generally speaking, an employer is not liable for the intentional criminal acts of its employees, unless the acts were engendered by, or arose out, the employee's duties. This one would be a close call.

What could hook the employers is a letter found in Curtis' employment records, which was an admonition to him to stop engaging in hugging or backrubs with clients in the home. The letter was written in November 2009. If the alleged molestations occurred after the letter was sent, the home could be negligent for keeping Curtis in its employ.

Source: MercuryNews.com

The Walton Law Firm represents seniors and dependent adults who have been abused or neglected in the nursing home, assisted living, or home health care setting. Call (866) 607-1325 for a free and confidential consultation.

It is estimated that a nursing home with an average of 100 beds will experience between 100 and 200 falls every year. More concerning is that nearly 2,000 nursing home residents will every year from injuries related to a fall, and fall victims who survive often suffer debilitating injuries.

Nursing homes are required to prevent falls by providing adequate care-planning. Not all falls can be prevented, but if the nursing facility does an adequate job of assessing the risk of falling on a patient-by-patient basis, and then provide regular reassessments and interventions on an ongoing basis, particularly after a fall, many more falls would be prevented.

The attorneys at Walton Law Firm represent seniors and dependent adults throughout California who have been injured or neglect in the nursing home and assisted living setting. Call (866) 607-1325 for a free and confidential consultation.

First, who can make a complaint? Under California law, any person can make a complaint about a nursing home; it does not just have to be the resident, family member, or responsible party. Complaints may be made anonymously.

When is a good time to make a complaint? A complaint should be made whenever one considers the treatment problems to be serious enough to report. It is usually a good idea to express your complaints to the facility first, but if you feel like you're not being taken seriously, call DPH.

Where are complaints made? Complaints should be made at the nearest district office of the DPH. There are several offices in Southern California, and contact information can be found at the Walton Law Firm website by clicking here.

What information should I give DPH? In short, everything. Before you speak to an investigator, it's a good idea to write your complaint down so you don't forget anything. Focus on the facts, and not your own opinions about the situation.

As a complainant, you will be notified of the name of the investigator assigned to your complaint within two days of the date the complaint is made. In addition, the nursing facility may not retaliate against a resident for a complaint that is made. In fact, any type of discriminatory treatment made against a nursing home resident within 180 days of a formal complaint is presumed to be retaliatory.

For more information about making a complaint against a nursing home, visit the website of California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform. The CANHR page How To File A Complaint can be found by clicking here.

The nursing home abuse and neglect lawyers at Walton Law Firm LLP provide free consultations to individuals and families who believe a loved one has been abused or neglected in the nursing home or assisted living setting. Cases are accepted in all Southern California counties, including San Diego, Orange, Riverside, Los Angeles, San Bernardino and Ventura. Call (866) 607-1325 for a free and confidential consultation

For almost twenty years the federal government has kept a database of disciplinary actions against doctors and dentist, and in 1999 individual state boards were required to include in the database reports on all other healthcare professional, including nurses, whose licenses were restricted or revoked. In California, however, not all penalized caregivers were included in the federal database. For example, California has formally disciplined 84 psychiatric technicians over the last two years, yet the federal database does not contain a single report of discipline against a psychiatric technician in the State of California.

The dangers of an incomplete database are obvious, as Dr. Sidney M. Wolfe of the Public Citizen's Health Research Group observed, prospective employers of health care professions could be given "a false sense of security that somebody who may be really dangerous isn't, because their name isn't there."

To read the entire ProPublica article click here.

The nursing home abuse and neglect lawyers at the Walton Law Firm represent seniors and dependent adults throughout California who have been abused or neglected in the skilled nursing facility, residential care facility for the elderly, and assisted living setting. Call (760) 571-5500 for a free and confidential consultation.

While the care might be questionable, the no one will question the profitability of these health care providers. In 2007, the profit-margins on long-term care hospitals was 6 percent on Medicare patients, which regular acute-care hospitals lost an average of 6 percent on Medicare patients. How does that happen? In a presentation last month by Select Medical, an owner of several long-term care hospitals, to its investors, it revealed that it maintains its profits by monitoring staffing and lowering supply costs.

Those of us who represent victims of neglect in long-term care facilities know that "monitoring staffing" is another way of saying that it keeps staffing levels at the lowest numbers allowable by law. That usually means a lower quality of care. As for Select Medical, this approach is victimizing patients.

Medicare inspection reports, however, describe preventable patient injuries and deaths, and they portray Select’s hospitals as understaffed and with high turnover. In the last three years, inspectors have found 22 violations of care standards at 12 Select hospitals so serious that, if uncorrected, could lead Medicare to ban those hospitals from admitting Medicare patients.

The 22 violations represent only an estimated 2 percent of the serious violations Medicare found nationally, but similar stories can be told all over the country. Right here in Southern California, Riverside County's Vista Hospital of Riverside has come under tremendous scrutiny by Medicare, and is under threat of being closed down. This law firm filed a lawsuit against last year for allegations of malpractice and neglect for the death of one of its patients.

The New York Times story - which can be found by clicking here - describes many instances of abuse and neglect it suggests is due to a failure to adequately regulate these hospitals; hospitals that frequently care for the sickest and most fragile patients.

The abuse and neglect lawyers at the Walton Law Firm represent seniors and dependent adults who have been abused or neglected in the nursing home, long-term care, and assisted living setting. Call (866) 607-1325 for a free and confidential consultation.

The first incident occurred in January of 2009, when Wilson was a resident of the San Diego skilled nursing facility El Dorado Care Center in El Cajon. She was placed in a room with two roommates, both of whom were on oxygen and confined to their beds. In the middle of the night, Wilson got out of her bed and set the mattress on fire of one of her roommates. The fire alarm was triggered, and caregivers were able to extinguish the flame before any injuries occurred.

In May, Wilson was transferred to the assisted living center Golden Paradise Senior Living in National City. Shortly after her arrival, she set fire to trash cans and in the library. Luckily, there were no injuries.

Prior to yesterday's sentencing, Wilson pled guilty to two counts of attempted murder, three counts of arson, and one count of assault with a deadly weapon. Attorney General Jerry Brown lauded the prosecution and sentencing.

"These fires were no accident," Brown said. "This woman meant to kill or seriously injure dozens of disabled people. Residents of nursing homes are particularly vulnerable, so today's sentence is an important victory in our fight against elder abuse in California communities."

Source: SanDiego6.com

The nursing home abuse and neglect lawyers at the Walton Law Firm represent seniors and dependent adults throughout California who have been abused or neglected in the skilled nursing facility, residential care facility for the elderly, and assisted living setting. Call (760) 571-5500 for a free and confidential consultation.

To combat the misuse of psychoactive drugs, the California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform have released a publication called Toxic Medicine - What You Should Know to Fight the Misuse of Psychoactive Drugs in California Nursing Homes. The 20-page booklet provides an overview of what psychoactive drugs are, their purposes, the risks associated with them, and an overview of the resident's rights.

Primary among those rights is the requirement of consent. Before a psychoactive drug can be used, a physician must inform the resident (or his/her decision-maker) about the drug, why it is being recommended, and the risks associated with it, and then must obtain consent before prescribing it. The guide also provides a list of questions that should be asked of a doctor who is recommending a psychoactive drug, and what to do if it is suspected that the drugs are being used without proper authority.

The California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform is a San Francisco based nonprofit dedicated to improving the lives of long-term care patients since 1983.

A .pdf of the Toxic Medicine booklet can be found by clicking here.

The nursing home abuse and neglect lawyers at the Walton Law Firm represent seniors and dependent adults who have been abused or neglected in the nursing home and assisted living setting. Call (866) 607-1325 for a free and confidential consultation.

These sad stories have created a cottage industry for nursing home providers. We have all now heard of nursing homes advertising themselves with "special neighborhoods for the memory impaired." Or providing "safe and secure" housing for the Alzheimer's patient. But what happens when the victim wanders away from those facilities?

A few years ago, such a thing happened in Escondido. Then a 94-year-old woman walked out of Palomar Heights Care Center in Escondido and into the path of a car, killing her instantly. Caregivers told the media that they didn't know what happened, but a subsequent lawsuit revealed some serious neglect on the part of the home.

It happened again yesterday in Castro Valley. An 89-year-old Alzheimer's sufferer was killed by a car after wandering away from an "Alzheimer's & Dementia Care Facility." It's unclear how this incident occurred, but you can bet that the primary reason the family of the victim placed him in the facility was to prevent the very thing that took his life. An investigation into the accident is ongoing.

Source: Mercury News

The nursing home abuse and neglect attorneys at the Walton Law Firm represent seniors and dependent adults who have been victims of physical abuse in the nursing home, and those who have been neglected or received substandard care. Call (866) 607-1325 or complete on online for for a free and confidential consultation.

USA Today has analyzed nursing home rankings under Medicare criteria and found that lowest scoring nursing homes tend to stay that way, year after year. Sadly, many of these poor performing nursing homes are the only nursing facilities for miles.

According to this article, twenty percent of the country's 15,700 nursing homes receive consistently poor ratings for the care they provide. With over 250,000 Americans living in skilled nursing facilities, that represents a huge number of vulnerable nursing home patients who are exposed to abuse or neglect every day.

"We want to see improvements, but we don't expect a nursing home will jump to a five-star rating within a one-year time period," said Medicare's Thomas Hamilton.

The USA Today analysis found an average of 14 annual deficiencies per facility.

Source: USA Today

The nursing home abuse and neglect lawyers at the Walton Law Firm represent seniors and dependent adults throughout California who have been abused or neglected in the nursing home and assisted living setting. Call (866) 607-1325 for a free and confidential consultation.

Apparently California is not alone. In Connecticut, the director of the state's Department of Public Health said his unit is dangerously understaffed. He has only four investigators to oversee the state's 231 certified nursing facilities, and told the Norwich Bulletin that if he had 10 more, he would have a lot more cases.

State Sen. Edith Prague has apparently had enough. She is set to re-introduce a bill that would make it easier to hold the owners of nursing homes criminally responsible for abuse and neglect of patients in their facilities. Under Prague’s bill, the state's DPH would be required to include a notice in nursing home applications telling owners they could be held criminally liable for patient neglect by employees, including for things such as inadequate staffing. “You can’t sue the state, but the nursing home owners who cut back on staffing I feel should be held responsible,” Prague said.

The bill was partly motivated by the story of Robert Wininger, a Connecticut man who died after developing gangrene in both legs while residing in a nursing home. The family filed a wrongful death lawsuit, and named as a defendant the state's public health commissioner.

Do we need such a bill in California? At Walton Law Firm, we have seen many deplorable acts of neglect and abuse, many of which have been investigated by the state, only to result in a small slap on the wrist. Maybe the threat of criminal prosecution would force the repeat offenders to either sell to competent owners or get out of the business.

Source: Norwich Bulletin

The nursing home abuse and neglect lawyers at the Walton Law Firm represent seniors and dependent adults throughout California who have been abused or neglected in the nursing home and assisted living setting. Call (866) 607-1325 for a free and confidential consultation.

The California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform (CANHR) have created a checklist to use when researching care facilities for the elderly. First and foremost, evaluate the most recent inspection report from the California Department of Social Services, Community Care Licensing (DSS). Your local DSS office will have a complete inspection file on every facility within its jurisdiction, and you have a right to review. Simply contact the office and make an appointment to go review the file. (Click here to find your local DSS office).

When reviewing the file, you want to make sure to examine:

● The inspection report. How did the facility do? Were there deficiencies, and, if so,did they involve resident care?
● Any complaints made against the facility in recent years, and how those complaints were addressed.
● Request to see the "Advisory Notes," form of written consultation provided by the licensing evaluator to the facility.

In addition, use the CANHR checklist to get a good idea about the day-to-day life in the facility, and to determine which home is best for you:

● Visit each facility several times.
● Pay special attention to how residents are being treated by staff and the quality and responsiveness of the services. Don't be sold only on the attractiveness of the facility.
● Narrow the options down to two or three facilities.
● In making visits, walk through the whole facility and visit at different times.
● Drop by unannounced and visit at night and/or on the weekend.
● Make sure that you visit during a mealtime.
● Obtain a copy of the admission agreement. Read it carefully. Understand the services, costs and conditions for transfer.

Click here to see the entire CANHR checklist.

Before making the decision, do your homework. You may be preventing a major headache down the road.

The nursing home abuse and neglect lawyers at the Walton Law Firm represent seniors and dependent adults throughout California who have been abused or neglected in the skilled nursing facility, residential care facility for the elderly, and assisted living setting. Call (866) 607-1325 for a free and confidential consultation.

Here is a list of the top 25 Southern California nursing homes as ranked as the U.S. News and World Report ranks as the best:

1. Rady Children's Hospital Bernardo Center, San Diego
2. Community Care Center, Duarte
3. Green Acres Lodge, Rosemead
4. Harbor View Center, Long Beach
5. Hillcrest Manor Sanitarium, National City
6. Parkside Special Care Center, El Cajon
7. Providence St. Elizabeth Care, North Hollywood
8. Whittier Hospital Medical Center, Whittier
9. Windsor Manor, Glendale
10. All Saints Healthcare Sub-acute, North Hollywood
11. Artesia Christian Home, Inc., Artesia
12. Bear Valley Community Hospital, Big Bear Lake
13. Brotman Medical Center, Culver City
14. California Convalescent Center, Los Angeles
15. Cherrylee Lodge, El Monte
16. Clear View Sanitarium, Gardena
17. Community Convalescent Center of San Bernardino, San Bernardino
18. Country Villa Broadway Healthcare Center, San Gabriel
19. Country Villa Glendale Healthcare Center, Glendale
20. Dunlap Sanitarium, Los Angeles
21. Glenbrook at La Costa Glen, Carlsbad
22. Kearny Mesa Convalescent, San Diego
23. Lanterman Developmental Center, Pomona
24. Marguerite Gardens, Alhambra
25. Monterey Care, Rosemead

To read the complete list click here.

The list was compiled by a variety of measurements, including state inspections, nursing home staffing, and other quality measures under Medicare and Medicaid guidelines. As mentioned in U.S. News, the "grade" is just that, a grade. It doesn't mean that your experience at this home will be of the quality suggested. There is no substitute for an in-depth visit to the nursing home you choose, which should include speaking with other residents and their families.

Source: U.S. News and World Report

The nursing home abuse and neglect lawyers at the Walton Law Firm represent seniors and dependent adults who have been abused or neglected in the nursing home and assisted living setting. Call (866) 607-1325 for a free and confidential consultation.

In a report from the California Attorney General, Hughes ordered one patient drugged because she "glared" at her. Another was given high doses of an anti-psychotic drug for throwing a carton of milk. Several residents became severely malnourished, and were left in bed drooling and emaciated.

"In a couple cases, elderly people were actually held down, restrained against their will, and given excessive amounts of medicine to keep them quiet," said AG Jerry Brown.

But here's the stunner. Hughes had been fired from a previous nursing home for over-drugging there. When the previous employer was called as a reference for the job at Kern Valley, they failed to explain why Hughes was terminated out of fear of lawsuits (ironically, since now they will become a part of a huge lawsuit). As a result of the deaths, Hughes, administrator Pamela Ott, and physician Hoshang Pormir have been charged with criminal elder abuse, all facing up to 11 years in jail. Lawsuits by the surviving family members, and probably others, are certain to follow. The FDA estimates that unnecessary anti-psychotics kill 15,000 nursing home patients each year.

Source: ABC News

The elder abuse and neglect lawyers at the Walton Law Firm represent seniors and dependent adults throughout California who have been abused or neglected in the nursing home and assisted living setting. Call (866) 607-1325 for a free and confidential consultation.

In an article out in the January 10 edition of Health Affairs, a team of researchers takes the first comprehensive look at the types of nursing facilities Hispanic elderly live in, and how the care at those homes compares to homes that house a primarily white patient population. According to the study, the disparity is sharp.

"The most shocking finding is the pervasiveness of disparities in nursing home care that are primarily white, compared to nursing homes that are a mix of whites and Hispanic residences," said Mary Fennell, professor of sociology and community health at Brown.

According to Fennell, the study reflects a change in elder care among Hispanic families, which traditionally has used nursing homes less than white or black families. In Hispanic households, care of the elderly is usually provided by adult daughters. But the economic realities of 21st Century America are changing that. Fennell said that the loss of in-home caregivers is occurring as the growth of elderly Hispanics is rising dramatically.

The study found that nursing home residents are increasingly coming from the lower end of the socio-economic scale, and lacking resources for better quality care in assisted living facilities or elsewhere. "People with resources can get into very good places or alternatives for nursing home care," Fennell said. "Everyone else is left with not-very-good facilities that are not performing well."

Source: Brown University

The nursing home abuse and neglect lawyers at the Walton Law Firm represent seniors and dependent adults who have been abused or neglected in the nursing home and assisted living setting. Call (866) 607-1325 for a free and confidential consultation.

Sexual assault in the nursing home is not common, but it is certainly not rare. Because of age and infirmity, including memory problems such as dementia and Alzheimer's disease, nursing home residents can be fairly easy targets for the criminally inclined. The Walton Law Firm has has cases involving sexual assault, physical abuse, and burglary committed by employee caregivers. Sometimes it's just a rouge employee, but there are times when the facilities fail to perform adequate background checks that would have revealed the criminal propensity of a caregiver.

Investigators told the Union Tribune that they believe that the elderly resident is Panem's only victim, but believe that she may have been raped by him on other occasions. The El Dorado Care Center is a skilled-nursing facility on Washington Street in El Cajon, California.

Source: signonsandiego.com

The San Diego elder abuse and neglect lawyers at Walton Law Firm LLP represent individuals who have suffered abuse or neglect in the hospital, nursing home, or residential care setting. Call (760) 571-5500 for a free and confidential consultation, of fill out an online form.