Tax payers footing the bill to protect nursing homes from elder abuse allegations. A report from Cedar Rapids has revealed that nursing homes use tax dollars from Medicaid to pay for lawyers when they’re sued in elder abuse cases.
Marlys Ingles grew up taking care of her blind parents and as she put it, [she] always felt very protective of my parents. So when her mother abruptly died on December 30, 2005 while living in a nursing home, she naturally wanted to know what happened. State inspection found that the staff “failed to perform CPR as instructed by [Ingles’s mother] and her doctor.
When Marlys Ingles learned that her mother’s death was due to professional negligence, she decided to sue the nursing home saying: if I would have had to take out a second mortgage on my home or something, I probably would have considered it… It just seems ridiculous that taxpayers’ money would be spent to defend the citation, especially when the citations are founded.
Medicaid calls legal fees an “allowable cost” and includes them in a home’s per-bed per-day reimbursement.
In eastern Iowa alone nursing homes have sought over $2.2 million in legal reimbursement. The Department of Human Services drafted a proposal to prevent reimbursement in cases where a home loses criminal or state civil action, however there is no news as to whether it will actually get passed and no new drafts have been seen publicly.
See report and read full article here.
If you believe that a loved one has suffered abuse at a nursing home or other care facility that promise to care for vulnerable adults, take action now and contact the Kosieradzki Smith Law Firm online or call us toll free at (877) 552 2873 to set up a FREE INITIAL CONSULTATION
