Elder Law

Illinois Nursing Home Violation: Evergreen Healthcare Center

By Levin & Perconti

The latest report of Illinois nursing homes that have violated basic resident health, care, and safety laws was recently released by state officials. Evergreen Healthcare Center, a nursing home in the Chicago are recently received several Type ?A? Violations from the Illinois Department of Public Health and fined $10,000. The violations resulted from the facility?s failure to follow physician orders, follow hospital transfer protocols, and other examples of Illinois nursing home neglect.

One of the issues related to the transfer of the wrong resident to the hospital.

According to reports, a 78 year old resident of the facility?a fully functioning man?was frightened when fire department paramedics went into his room in the early morning and rushed him off to the hospital. The man had no apparent medical problems. It turns out that the man?s roommate was the one who needed to be taken to the hospital because of tachycardia (a dangerous acceleration of the heart rate).

This all occurred even through the resident repeatedly told the responders that he was in no distress and that some mistake must have been made. His responses were ignored. No nursing home staff members were monitoring the situation in any way to ensure that the correct resident was taken to the hospital. In fact, the paramedics stopped at the front desk with the man in transport to receive transfer documents?no one bothered to notice that the wrong resident was being moved against his will.

The hospital staff reported upon his arrival that the patient had no complaints and believed the transfer to be in error. The resident was concerned that his roommate (the individual who was supposed to receive medical care) was in harm, because he had been complaining about problems all night.

All of this would have been avoided if, according to required protocol, a nurse had been in the room at the time of the transfer.

Full post as published by Illinois Nursing Home Abuse Blog on March 25, 2011 (boomark / email).