The NY Times has an interesting article about how health care providers misuse HIPAA to conceal medical mistakes or neglect from family members. An emergency room nurse told Gerard Nussbaum he could not stay with his father-in-law while the elderly man was being treated after a stroke. Another nurse threatened Mr. Nussbaum with arrest for
David McGuffey is a great nursing home and elder law attorney from Tn. He is kind enough to share with other nursing home attorney his summary of important cases and legal theories. Recently he wrote an article about direct liability of parent corporations in the nursing home industry. Below are excerpts: In Forsythe v. Clark
It should be noted that there are certain violations discovered during the survey process that will have an affect on the well-being of a resident. For instance, not having sufficient staff to meet the residents needs, failure to notify the physician of a change of the resident’s condition, dehydration, malnutrition. Moreover, prior conduct in general
Discoverability of Personnel Files In D’Angelo v. U.S., a medical malpractice and negligent hiring action against Veterans Administration Hospital, the court allowed the plaintiff to discover specific information contained in three doctors’ personnel files, specifically, “any and all records of patient complaints, disciplinary action, staff review of performance, malpractice actions (actual or threatened), job applications,
Incident/Accident Reports Incident reports are generated in the regular course of business of the nursing home any time there is an unusual occurrence related to a resident. These are required to be created both by DHEC and by OBRA, and any incident report should list any and all witnesses to an incident or occurrence, as
Boone Retirement Center, Inc. v. Hamilton, 946 SW 2d. 740( MO. 1997) as standing for the proposition that quality assurance records are not discoverable in a civil case such as the case at bar. The Defendant’s interpretation of Boone is incorrect. In Boone, the State of Missouri Division on Aging conducted inspections of Boone Retirement