Beverly Enterprises - Poster Child Of Fraud And Neglect In Nursing Home Industry

SAVE AS FAVORITE

VIEW FAVORITES

By Evelyn Pringle (about the author) Page 6 of 7 page(s)

opednews.com Permalink

Scabies is a contagious skin disorder caused by a very small wingless insect that burrows into the skin and lays one to three eggs daily. It is a form of lice, and infestation can spread by skin to skin contact or by sharing of clothing, towels, and bedding and causes intense itching and is painful.

The plaintiff in this case also contracted a severe infestation of scabies that was neglected and not treated or diagnosed for over a month while she endured severe physical pain.

Her condition was worse than it otherwise would have been because her paralysis prevented her from scratching when she itched, and she was permanently scarred from the scabies infestation.

During the last 6 months of her residency at Beverly, the plaintiff lost more than 60 pounds because the facility was understaffed and did not feed her and also because the facility ran out of food and medical supplies on one occasion.

As hard as it is to believe, this kind of neglect and abuse is actually happening to our elderly citizens in 2006.

On March 15, 2006, Northwest Arkansas News reported that Beverly closed on a deal to sell itself to a subsidiary of Fillmore Capital Partners LLC on March 14, 2006.

Beverly operates 342 nursing homes across the country, including 16 in Arkansas, according to NAN.

Fillmore President Ron Silva apparently has given a lot of thought to solving Beverly's financial woes. To start off on the right foot, NWN reports that he said, "Arkansas needs a specific tort reform for nursing homes to limit the number of lawsuits filed."

According to court documents filed in December 22, 2005, as part of the sale Mr, Floyd, Mr. Devereaux, and other executives and board members will personally receive payments totaling $109 million. Mr, Floyd's severance package will be $40 million.

But on May 16, 2006, in a 10-year-old case, McKnight's Long-Term Care News, reported a decision representing a win for organized labor, when the National Labor Relations Board ruled that Beverly violated federal labor law when it retaliated against employees following a 3-day strike in the mid-1990s at some of its Pennsylvania facilities.

The board ordered Beverly to post notice of its violations at all of its nursing homes and to reinstate 8 employees with back pay and benefits, and ordered the company to recognize the Service Employees International Union at two of its Pennsylvania facilities.
Citing previous rulings against the company, the NLRB said Beverly's actions indicate it continues to have a proclivity to violate the act and that its widespread misconduct demonstrates a general disregard for its employees' Section 7 rights."

In a previous decision in 2001, the NLRB found the company committed numerous unfair labor practices during contract talks with SEIU locals that resulted in a three-day strike at 15 of the 20 homes operated by two subsidiaries in Pennsylvania.

Whatever happened to the corporate integrity agreement? This next case involving a resident's death took place on March 2, 2002.

On May 4, 2006, the Lexington Herald Ledger reported that a jury awarded $20 million to the estate of Loren Richards, 84, who died on March 2, 2002, at Beverly Health and Rehabilitation of Frankfort.

Mr. Richards' daughter sued the home, claiming that nurses had ignored her father's repeated calls for help with abdominal pain. With an impacted bowel," the Ledger said, "he later died of a heart attack."

The attorney for the estate told the jury the 100-bed facility was severely understaffed due to a companywide effort to cut expenses and raise the stock price.

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7