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Welcome to the nexus of ethics, psychology, morality, technology, health care, and philosophy
Showing posts with label Nursing Homes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nursing Homes. Show all posts

Friday, May 3, 2019

Fla. healthcare executive found guilty in $1B Medicare fraud case

Associated Press 
Modern Healthcare
Originally published April 5, 2019

Florida healthcare executive Philip Esformes was found guilty Friday of paying and receiving kickbacks and other charges as part of the biggest Medicare fraud case in U.S. history.

During the seven-week trial in federal court in Miami, prosecutors called Esformes a trickster and mastermind of a scheme paying bribes and kickbacks to doctors to refer patients to his nursing home network from 2009 to 2016. The fraud also included paying off a regulator to learn when inspectors would make surprise visits to his facilities, or if patients had made complaints.

Esformes owns dozens of Miami-Dade nursing facilities as well as homes in Miami, Los Angeles and Chicago.

The info is here.

Friday, October 3, 2014

Nana Cams: Personal Surveillance Video and Privacy in the Age of Self Embellishment

by Craig Klugman, Ph.D.
Bioethics.net
Originally posted September 10, 2014

In David Eggers’ novel, The Circle, a fictional internet company creates and encourages users to video stream their lives. Wearing a small camera, people can share every experience of every day with whomever wants to follow them…except to the bathroom. The first streamers become instant celebrities and instant villains. The result is the end of privacy as anyone has known it. The upshot, according to the fictional company, is that if people know they are being watched (or might be being watched), people will behave more civilly. The echoes of Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon notwithstanding, at the end of the book the protagonist suddenly wonders if the recording of all lives comes at too high a cost.

The entire blog post is here.

Thursday, December 5, 2013

Watchful Eye in Nursing Homes

By Jan Hoffman
The New York Times
Originally published November 18, 2013

Here are some excerpts:

In June, Mike DeWine, the Ohio state attorney general, announced that his office, with permission from families, had placed cameras in residents’ rooms in an unspecified number of state facilities. Mr. DeWine has moved to shut down at least one facility, in Zanesville, where, he said, cameras caught actions like an aide’s repeatedly leaving a stroke patient’s food by his incapacitated side.

The recordings can have an impact. Based on Ms. Racher’s videos, one aide pleaded guilty to abuse and neglect. The other appears to have fled the country. Similar scenes of abuse have been captured in New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas and other states by relatives who placed cameras in potted plants and radios, webcams and iPhones.

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But the secret monitoring of a resident raises ethical and legal questions. Families must balance fears for their relative’s safety against an undignified invasion of their privacy. They must also consider the privacy rights of others who pass through the room, including roommates and visitors.

Proponents of hidden cameras argue that expectations of privacy have fallen throughout society: nanny cams, webcams and security cameras are ubiquitous.

The entire article is here.

Friday, September 13, 2013

U.S. Nursing Homes Reducing Use of Antipsychotic Drugs

By Alan Mozes
MedicineNet.com
Originally published August 27, 2013

A year-old nationwide effort to prevent the unnecessary use of antipsychotic medications in U.S. nursing homes already seems to be working, public health officials report, as facilities begin to opt for patient-centered approaches over drugs to treat dementia and other related complications.

So far, the program has seen more than a 9 percent drop in the national use of antipsychotics among long-term nursing-home residents, when comparing the period of January to March 2013 with October to December 2011.

The entire story is here.

Sunday, October 2, 2011

In Deal, Hundreds of Mentally Ill People Will Leave Confinement of Nursing Home

By Anemona Hartcollis
The New York Times
Published September 12, 2011

Hundreds of mentally ill people who have been confined to nursing homes, sometimes in prisonlike conditions, would move to apartments or other housing within three years under a legal settlement with New York State.

The settlement resolved a case that was filed in Brooklyn federal court in 2006 and that accused the state of violating the spirit of its own longstanding rules for housing mentally ill people.

In researching the case, the plaintiffs found that psychiatric centers and nursing homes had developed “turnaround agreements, which essentially were written agreements to transfer patients back and forth,” Veronica S. Jung, senior staff attorney for New York Lawyers for the Public Interest, which helped to represent plaintiffs, said Monday.

“This certainly raises broader, troubling questions about the role of nursing homes, and their financial stakes, within the mental health care system,” Ms. Jung said.

The settlement came as the judge in the case, Brian M. Cogan, set a trial date for early October, Ms. Jung said.

“It did seem pretty clear that the specter of going to trial in the next few days probably motivated the state to move more quickly in negotiations,” Ms. Jung said. The state has agreed to pay $2.5 million in legal fees and costs to the plaintiffs’ counsel.

Andrew J. Zambelli, counselor to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, said the state had settled the case because “it just jibed with our kind of policy viewpoint — care for the vulnerable, into the community, using money appropriately.”

Under longstanding legal principle in New York and elsewhere, the mentally ill cannot be confined unless they are considered a threat to themselves or others, and should be housed in the least restrictive setting appropriate for their needs.

Under the terms of the settlement, the Cuomo administration has agreed to reform the process used to assess whether patients are capable of living in the community and want to live there. The state has also promised to hire independent contractors who would be trained to make the assessments.

The entire story can be found here.