Residents in one out of every three Kansas nursing homes face critical harm or risk of major jeopardy, according to state citations issued this year.
Kansas has the fourth biggest percentage of fines being assessed against nursing homes in the country.
Nursing home fines are often assessed after a facility is found to have endangered the lives of residents or failed to comply with regulations.
Nursing home fines are one way to hold these facilities accountable for putting the lives and dignity of the elderly and vulnerable at risk.
Nursing Home Fines Represent Many Citations and Complaints
Across the nation, nearly 14 percent of nursing homes have had some form of citation, according to information gathered and analyzed by the state of Wisconsin.
Immediate jeopardy is defined as the most serious citation a nursing home can receive, indicating that a facility or a situation there is likely to cause serious harm, injury, death, or impairment.
Sometimes these fines are assessed at the same time that patient injury and death reports are filed, but the fines and citations can be given for numerous reasons.
These can include failures to carry out doctor’s orders or unexplained injuries to residents that have not been fully investigated.
An association working on behalf of nursing homes as well as other aging services shared that nursing home fines have been on the rise because the number of immediate jeopardy reports and citations in Kansas jumped from nine in 2012 up to 134 in 2016.
Inspectors in Kansas have issued 99 citations and nursing home fines in 2017 alone. That state inspects those nursing homes on behalf of the federal government.
The federal fines of nursing homes in Kansas have also soared. The federal government assessed nursing home fines in the amount of $52,275 in 2012. However, by 2016, the amount of nursing home fines within the state was more than $4.6 million.
The fines, according to industry advocates, are crippling nursing homes, however, the serious injuries alleged by patients and their loved ones call for government investigations and fines as one way to hold these facilities and the necessary staff members accountable for injuries and dangerous situations.
Safety advocates in recent years have come forward to share that there are not enough or strong enough procedures to capture inadequate procedure complaints linked to nursing home facilities and to ensure that possible incidents of neglect or abuse are reported.
In recent years, many news stories and government reports have profiled the problems in America’s nursing homes. With a large portion of the population reaching the age at which people may need a nursing home, regulation and violations of compliance are increasingly important.
If you believe that a loved one has suffered nursing home abuse or neglect, you may be the only advocate speaking out on behalf of his or her best interests.
Scheduling a consultation with the lawyers at McDonald Worley may give you the information necessary to proceed with a legal claim and stop the cycle of abuse – call today to learn more about your rights.