Nursing Home Abuse Lawyer California Blog

Beginning Jan. 1, 2012, a new California state law will allow California counties to offer a confidential internet system for reporting elder abuse in long-term care facilities.

Currently, those who work in financial institutions, law enforcement and in healthcare, including nursing home staff, are required by law to report suspicions of elder abuse in a “timely manner.” In many counties there can be a long wait before a call is answered due to staff cuts and a high volume of callers. More

Newly proposed legislation could soon allow nurses in nursing homes to administer controlled substance painkillers to residents when acting on a physician’s verbal orders.

The legislation comes despite increasing numbers of nursing home residents who have been killed because of poorly administered, or over-administered, painkillers. More

Each year, it is estimated that 1 out of 3 adults ages 65 and older falls. Falls are the leading cause of injuries that result in death. In nursing home residents, falls are the leading cause of injury.

Even when the fall does not result in injury, most elderly people who fall develop an acute fear of falling again.

Elderly nursing home residents are at a high risk for fall-related injury because with their aging comes numerous physical changes, including: More

Five nursing home workers who participated in a November 2009 prank involving elderly dementia patients in a Ukiah, Calif., nursing home have been sentenced.

Accused of enacting a prank where they coated 7 elderly dementia patients from head to foot in a slippery ointment so they would be slippery when the staff for the next shift arrived, all 5 had their nursing assistant licenses revoked and are ineligible to work in nursing homes again. More

When 81-year-old William Leo McDougall was charged with one felony count of murder after beating his 94-year-old roommate over the head with a metal clothing rod, the case helped to expose a growing epidemic of resident-on-resident violence in nursing homes.

Imagine being attacked in your own home and never knowing when it will happen again. One of the most emotionally disturbing aspects about resident-on-resident violence is its unpredictability.

Yet there is a shocking lack of official reporting or legal action taken against violent residents who attack other residents. More