A man in a wheelchair was left outside a St. Petersburg nursing home on a 95-degree summer day. When the nursing home’s staff discovered him two hours later, he was unresponsive. His body temperature had climbed to 106. In Brandon, a nursing home resident was found tied up in bed. The same thing happened to a cognitively impaired woman in an Oldsmar facility. In Tampa, a nursing home resident was rushed to a hospital, where he would spend the next 11 days. The home’s staff had failed to notify his doctor about lab results that should have prompted a change in medications.
Unionized long-term care workers gathered at Connecticut’s Legislative Office Building in Hartford on Tuesday to demand higher wages. They want to make a minimum of $25 an hour by 2025. The state has a huge budget surplus, that’s why his members are demanding the wage hike ahead of Governor Ned Lamont’s budget presentation to lawmakers on Wednesday, said Rob Baril, president of SEIU District 1199 New England, the union that represents the workers. “There’s nothing new about poverty. What is new is that we now have the resources to end it,” Baril said.
A provider of home health care services in Delaware County owes $2.3 million in back wages to its workers after purposely shortchanging them on overtime hours they worked over a three-year period. Federal investigators said that Affectionate Home Health Care Services, in Lansdowne, violated bookkeeping regulations and neglected to pay employees the required amount for their overtime hours. The facility will make restitution for back wages owed, as well as additional payments for damages and civil penalties. The U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Pennsylvania entered a consent judgment on Jan. 24, requiring the company to pay more than $1.1 million in back wages and an equal amount in damages to 398 of its employees.
After several days without power, Martha Dolliver and other residents at their assisted living facility in Lakeway were in better spirits than one would expect. “We can go out in some of the common areas,” she described. “You know, just visiting and talking, we get a little warmer. It’s not real warm, but we’re dressed warmly.” The facility had a backup generator powering residents’ essential medical equipment and warming many areas of the facility. The temperature in her room, however, had dropped to the fifties.
Horns blared as cars drove past a group of nursing home workers outside the Dunkirk Rehabilitation and Nursing Center on Wednesday afternoon on Lake Shore Drive, as workers and union representatives picketed for better working conditions and increased compensation. A small group of workers and union representatives peacefully demonstrating in front of the Dunkirk facility grew in numbers once more workers finished their shifts later that afternoon. More than 200 nursing home workers at four facilities across Western New York are fighting for better compensation in their next contract, after their most recent three-year contract expired on Dec. 31. Caregivers at the Rehabilitation and Nursing Center locations in Dunkirk, Eden, Houghton, and Salamanca have been bargaining for a new contract for several months without much progress on their demands. Union nursing home workers are represented by 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East.
A senior living facility CEO has been indicted in Wisconsin on federal charges that he committed fraud against the government and employees and his alleged crimes led to a decline in the quality of care for patients at nursing homes. A grand jury in the Western District of Wisconsin returned a 12-count indictment against Kevin Breslin, 56, managing member and CEO of KBWB Operations, LLC doing business as Atrium Health and Senior Living. The company had skilled nursing facilities (SNFs) in New Jersey, Wisconsin, and Michigan. “The defendants certified that they would operate their Wisconsin SNFs with adequate staffing, supplies, environment, and ancillary services, which they did not do. The defendants certified that they would operate their Wisconsin SNFs in a manner that would enhance the resident’s quality of life by providing them services and activities to attain and maintain the highest practicable physical, mental, and psychosocial well-being of each resident in accordance with a written plan of care, which they did not do,” reads the indictment. “Instead of using their Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement funds to take care of the residents in their Wisconsin SNFs, and ensure that the Wisconsin residents attained or maintained the highest practicable physical, mental, and psychosocial well-being, as required by Title 42, the defendants diverted these funds for other purposes.”