Law Firm Resources & News

An assisted living facility is not a nursing home. It doesn’t provide medical care and rarely has trained nurses on site. Assisted living facilities are not inspected by or supervised by the federal government. Typically, such facilities are monitored by a state agency – and they are doing a terrible job! Not only are the…

How many times have we read in the newspapers or heard from friends about a resident-upon-resident attack in a nursing home? It happens frequently! Dementia and frustration can lead the most tranquil of residents to push, pull, and hit other residents. Some residents are very “territorial” and see roommates, and others, as violators of their…

Now that should get their attention! Cottonwood Healthcare in Woodland has received an “AA” citation and a $90,000 fine, the most severe under state law, after the California Department of Health Services (CDHS) concluded an investigation into what lead to the death of 89-year-old Eva Anita Morgan. Records show that Morgan was died on March…

I think so don’t you? Isn’t that what we teach our children? Admit when you are wrong and say you are sorry! Now, there is a national movement to encourage healthcare professionals to follow such simple rules when their errors constitute medical negligence and the patient is injured as a result. The group calls itself…

Our local paper, the Roanoke Times, ran a good article from the AP this morning:http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/D/DIAGNOSING_STROKES?SITE=VAROA&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT. The Article states that new studies reveal that MRIs provide superior diagnosing images over CT scans for physicians when seeking evidence of a stroke. The study said with MRIs, the physicians diagnosed the stroke correctely 83% of the time, where…

On our firm website – https://frithlawfirm.com/, we speak about a bacterial outbreak in an assisted living facility that lead to the death of at least two residents…. but can you imagine, two babies have died because staff did not properly sterilize instruments.http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/local/states/california/northern_california/16533941.htm. What a tragedy – and one that could have been prevented. I know…

The typical medical school education teaches it’s doctors-to-be to match the patient’s symptoms to a mental medical encyclopedia of diagnoses. (A great episode from the TV comedy Seinfeld comes to mind wherein Kramer’s complaints of certain symptoms are correctly diagnosed by the doctor in training as gonorrhea!) However, Dr. Jerome Groopman, a professor of medicine…

Federal officials fined a Kansas City nursing home $10,000 in the November death of a resident whose neck became pinned between a bed rail and mattress, reported The Kansas City (KS) Star. The facility violated two federal regulations, a state regulation, and a state law in its handling of the Alzheimer’s resident, according to an…

We typically report the bad news surrounding nursing homes and bad medical care. Well, here we report some good news! A recent furnace malfunction at the Woodhaven Nursing Home in Montvale, Virginia led to an orderly and timely evacuation of all endangered residents – most importantly, no one was hurt or injured! The furnace malfunction…

I want to recommend a resource to those reading our blog and looking for a good resource on important information on America’s number one health issue – the abuse of the elderly. The National Center on Elder Abuse (NCEA) is a national resource for elder rights, law enforcement and legal professionals, public policy leaders, researchers,…

If you are considering moving into an assisted living facility you better read the lengthy series of articles published by the Washington Post in 2004 on problems with Virginia’s assisted living industry. Assisted living facilities are designed to offer more freedom to its residents, who are often more healthy than those residing in nursing homes.…