When fewer, less well-trained staff members are forced to care for the same number of elderly residents, he says, their ability to do so becomes difficult. However, he notes, that job gets easier if residents sleep a lot and don't ask for much.
"Noisy, demanding residents make it hard for these already struggling staff members," Mr Abourezk said. "Medication helps tremendously."
According to the Northwest article, Beverly was already facing its "first class-action lawsuit after another Arkansas judge grew impatient last month with the company's release of documents and issued a default judgment in favor of the plaintiffs."
The lawsuit, filed on behalf of former residents, also alleges that Beverly executives gained profits by not providing enough staff.
On January 28, 2005, Judge Robert Bynum Gibson ordered Beverly to provide plaintiffs with a list of residents in the Warren nursing home from August 1999 to when the facility closed in September 2003.
Although Beverly provided 171 names, at a March 7, 2005 hearing, plaintiffs' attorneys reported that they found 6 more names by searching obituary listings and the total number had grown to more than 240.
On October 4, 2005, the Attorney General of Arkansas, Mike Beebe, announced that Beverly had agreed to pay $1.5 million to settle 26 investigations involving 12 of its Arkansas nursing homes.
In this deal, Beverly paid $1 million to the state Medicaid Program and $500,000 to better train nursing home staff at the facilities.
But this settlement agreement is really a joke considering we're talking about one of the largest nursing home chains in the country. The settlement required Beverly to establish programs to recognize, treat and prevent pressure sores and other patient-care injuries, to reduce falls, and to prevent narcotics abuse by staff members, according to a press release issued by the attorney general's office.
Does this mean 20 years after its first known arrest in 1986, it still does not know what a bed sore is?
Attorney Philip Thomas is a lawyer practicing civil litigation in Mississippi. He and attorneys John Giddens and Pieter Teeuwissen recently filed 2 lawsuit against Beverly Enterprises and its related companies in federal court Mississippi.
One is a breach-of-contract class-action on behalf of residents who were not provided adequate care in compliance with federal and state regulations and their contracts with the Beverly facilities. And the second involves severe abuse and neglect where a woman suffered bed sores, scabies (lice) and had a feces-covered bandage rot into her skin because it was not changed.
Mr Thomas says he believes that understaffing is the root of all evil in nursing homes. "The number one priority of the corporation," he said, "is to increase profits."
"The biggest expense in running a nursing home is labor," he explains, "so the easiest way to lower expenses and increase profits is to cut labor."
Not having enough caregivers, he says, is tragic for the residents. "Nearly everyone living in a nursing home," he notes, "is there because they require assisted living."
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