Recommended Blog: Probate Sharks

Our mission is to expose and remedy corruption in the Probate Court of Cook County, Illinois. We assist, educate and enlighten families of the dead, the dying, the disabled and the aged to better understand their rights in order to protect themselves from the excesses of the Probate Court of Cook County.

ProbateSharks.com is dedicated to networking the human element of people to people. We join together in reforming the corrupt Cook County Probate Court system.

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ProbateSharks.com

New Survey: Half of Hospitals Buy Back Door Drugs

Amid growing reports of price-gouging for life-saving drugs, half of hospital officials said they’ve bought medications from back-door suppliers during recent drug shortages, a new survey shows.

Fifty-two percent of hospital purchasing agents and pharmacists reported they’d bought drugs from so-called “gray market” vendors during the previous two years, according to a just-released survey of 549 hospitals by the Institute for Safe Medication practices, an advocacy group.

Gray-market suppliers are those that operate outside official channels, often buying drugs from uncertain sources and reselling them at a steep profit. A report issued last week by a one hospital association found their average mark-up was 650 percent.

Pressures from demanding doctors and desperate patients helped fuel the transactions, making hospital staffers feel like they had no choice but to buy drugs in short supply at steep prices.

“Our physicians DO NOT want to hear that a drug is ‘unavailable,’” wrote one hospital pharmacist who submitted comments to the anonymous survey.

Full Article and Source:
Half of Hospitals Buy Back Door Drugs,New Survey Shows

Florida Guardianship System: Legal Human Bondage

I wrote a series of columns (“Al Katz: A Holocaust Survivor,” January and February 2011) about Al Katz, a Holocaust Survivor and senior citizen living part-time in Florida.

At age 89, Al was put under the custody of the state; his health deteriorated while under state control, and he died as a result. I tried to understand why the State of Florida, its probate court and public and professional guardianship system would not do everything in their power to return Al and his estate to his family. I now think I have the answer to that quandary.

The system is incestuous and inextricably leads to legal human bondage.

These are strong words, but facts are facts. Al Katz is not the exception; sadly, he may be the rule. Other senior citizens are subject to the same system, a broken system, a probate court system designed to seize and hold a person and their property. The person is held until drained of life and the property held until it is drained of value.

In the case of Al Katz the system showed itself for what it is – inhuman.

The short version of Al Katz’s story is he lived part time in Florida as do many seniors. He was put under the control of the state using the Baker Act. When his daughter, Beverly Newman, arrived and agreed to take full responsibility for her father and his estate, the state gave Al the man back, after a lengthy court battle, but not his property. A man without his property is nothing but a shell of himself. Al’s estate remained in the hands of various guardians.

The ultimate guardian should have been Beverly. Instead it was Herbert G. Schimmel, a person totally unknown to Al and his family.

Al’s daughter Beverly has been trying, since her father died, to get what little remains of his formerly-extensive estate returned. The problem is no one knows what was seized by the state when Al was put under public guardianship. You see when a person is placed under guardianship that person and that person’s property become under the complete control of the state. The guardians go into the person’s home and take whatever they want with no inventory list verified by witnesses or independent audit of the estate done. When time comes to release the property, in the case of Al Katz, there is no clear chain of custody or way to determine what happened to his assets. In Al’s case, this includes sizable insurance policies and an expensive jewelry collection that had been insured for over $22,000.

Full Article and Source:
Florida Guardianship System: Legal Human Bondage

'Assisted Living Facility Operators Have Hold on Florida Legislators, So Good Luck Keeping Granny Safe'

Anyone who's been following the Miami Herald's investigation of the wretched conditions in some of Florida's assisted living facilities might wonder how the state could have cruelly turned its back on so many sick and helpless people.

The answer is as simple as it is sickening: Money.

Florida doesn't spend enough of it enforcing the laws and regulations governing the facilities, while the industry spends a fortune buying off key state lawmakers with campaign donations.

One of them is Sen. Rene Garcia, a Republican from Hialeah who chairs the Health Regulation Committee. Remember this character's name, in case he ever dreams of running for statewide office.

Garcia's district includes more than 100 assisted living facilities, including some of the worst and most heavily fined in Miami-Dade. Thanks to Garcia and others, it's not easy for one of these joints to get in trouble, no matter what horrors are taking place inside.

Statewide, more than 70 residents in assisted living are known to have perished from gangrene, starvation, narcotic overdoses and burns. At least 200 others have died under suspicious circumstances, but the records have been sealed.

In one case, caregivers at a facility in Manatee County managed to overlook an 85-year-old man while nearly half of his face was consumed by a cancerous tumor. In another facility, three people died, including a senior who fell down 24 separate times.

Despite all this, legislators beholden to assisted living facility lobbyists assiduously labored to gut the laws meant to keep these homes safe. Too many rules and regulations, they complained.

Heck, it's only human suffering we're talking about.

Even as the authorities found residents neglected, abused and even dying, lawmakers — who are rarely made to sleep in their own urine — were working aggressively on behalf of the facilities. Their mission was to shrink state oversight, minimize the number of inspections and make it harder to shut down rogue facilities.

This year in Tallahassee, 23 bills were introduced to weaken state supervision over these facilities. Most of them were written by the Florida Assisted Living Association, the industry lobby group. No one is more slavishly obedient to their wishes than Garcia, who collected $8,100 in campaign contributions from assisted living facility corporate interests.

Sen. Don Gaetz, a Destin Republican, said he couldn't recall language in one of his own co-sponsored bills that stopped the state from bringing medical teams to assisted living facilities to decide whether sick residents should be removed from the homes for their own safety.

"I just don't remember," Gaetz said.

Full Article and Source:
Carl Hiaasen: Assisted Living Facility Operators Have Hold on Florida Legislators, So Good Luck Keeping Granny Safe

Recommended Website: FreeBritney.com

"Even when you go to jail, you know there is the time you're gonna get out. But in this situation,it's never ending. I think it's too in control. If I wasn't under the restraints I'm under, I'd feel so liberated. When I tell them the way I feel, it's like they're really not listening. I never wanted to become one of those prisoner people.

I always wanted to feel free."

Source:
FreeBritney.com

Judge Blocks Efforts to Access Britney Spears' Medical Info

A judge won’t give a company suing Britney Spears access to her medical information.

The pop star is still under court-ordered conservatorship after a bout of erratic behavior in 2008. Her father and attorneys control her personal and financial affairs.

Because of the conservatorship, she will not be required to give a deposition in the lawsuit from the company Brand Sense, which claims it helped negotiate a perfume deal for Spears but was cut out of the profits.

Brand Sense wanted to see medical records proving Spears couldn’t testify. But Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Reva Goetz ruled Tuesday that Brand Sense Partners has no standing to see medical records.

Source:
Judge Blocks Company’s Effort to get Access to Britney Spears’ Medical Records to Aid Lawsuit

Daughter Fights for Control of Mother

Marjorie Partch wants to regain the care and estate of her mother, Dorothy Partch, while she recuperates from a stroke at Wilton Meadows.

With a complaint now before the Superior Court in Stamford, Marjorie Partch is trying to make sense of how her life has spun so far out of control in a few short years.

"I'm trying to gain my mother's money, which is three or four times what she owes Wilton Meadows," Marjorie Partch said. "I wanted her to be taken care of while I got the house (at 20 Devil's Garden Road in Norwalk) in order for a wheelchair and organized. Then everything turned upside down. I took time off from work and that's when (Wilton Meadows) took their actions. I was thrown out of the house with nothing. They'll say I'm a lunatic, and at this point I'd say who isn't?"

The attorney for the rehabilitation and health care-center at 439 Danbury Road says the facility has done nothing wrong, and the court system is overseeing the elder Partch's ongoing treatment.

"On July 27, 2010, Wilton Meadows brought an inaccurate application for an Involuntary Conservatorship for my mother to probate court, and a conservator was wrongly appointed, over my objections as her health care representative and pre-designated conservator," Marjorie Partch said. "I am pursuing this illegality in superior court, and the facility is very unhappy that the matter has been brought beyond probate court, with whom they appear to have a very 'cozy' relationship. The superior court judge is reopening the case for re-argument in order to investigate fraud, a possibility (the judge) is clearly considering."

Angelo Maragos, attorney for Wilton Meadows, has a different interpretation.

"I think of the bases of (Marjorie Partch's) complaint is fraud, and Wilton Meadows is alleging Marjorie Partch is committing fraud to get at her mother's estate," Maragos said. "I think Wilton Meadows did everything correctly. At the original hearing before the Norwalk Probate Court, Marjorie Partch did not raise any issues about fraud, and she made no objection to the conservator. Wilton Meadows has been taking care of Mrs. Partch since before that date. Every step we've taken since then has been under the supervision of the court."

Full Article and Source:
Daughter Seeks to Regain Control of Mother's Care While at Wilton Meadows

Press Release: Nursing Home Complaint Center

The Nursing Home Complaint Center is calling its efforts to identify US nursing home patients, who needlessly get sepsis, septic shock, broken bones, and or victims of wrongful death, their number one priority in 2011.

The group is saying, "we believe needless sepsis infections, septic shock, broken bones, wrongful death, and elder abuse in our nation's nursing homes are at epidemic levels, and we want to hear from family members who have proof the sick, or deceased family member was mistreated, or not treated at all-with the result being a wrongful death, or they are now in a ICU at a nearby hospital."

The group says, "one of the biggest problems we see in the vast majority of our nation's nursing homes is staffing levels, are not high enough to meet Medicare, or Medicaid standards, with the result being dead patients, or patients suffering from sepsis, or septic shock, due to medical malpractice, or broken bones."

If a family member, or loved one has died in a US nursing home from provable wrongful death, or now has sepsis, is in septic shock, or has broken bones, please call the Nursing Home Complaint Center at 866-714-6466, or contact the group via its web site at http://NursingHomeComplaintCenter.Com

Source:
Nursing Home Complaint Center Makes Discovering Victims Of Sepsis Septic Shock Broken Bones & Wrongful Death Its Number One Priority For US Nursing Home Patients

Editorial: SeniorCare Case Cries Out for State Investigation

OK, Essex County Superior Court Judge Mary Anne Sahagian has now awarded guardianship of 84-year-old Joseph Judd to his grandson, Vito Loiacono, as Loiacono had been seeking all along.

The judge told SeniorCare attorney Larry Varn of Pierce Atwood in Boston that the Gloucester-based nonprofit care service does not have "a horse in this race."

And Donnalee Leonardo, a court-appointed attorney who has looked into Judd's mental and physical state, found that the man who had to be rushed to Addison Gilbert Hospital in June 2010 with a near fatal glucose count while under SeniorCare's supervision is now "close to home, with lots more contact with his family now than before."

Indeed, she also found that Judd, who suffers from dimentia, among other ailments, but continues to recover from his brush with death at Seacoast Rehabilitation Center "would have wanted Vito Loiacono to be his guardian."

So why, pray tell, is SeniorCare continuing to actively contest Loiacono's request to become Judd's conservator — essentially, someone who would managed his grandfather's assets?

And why has SeniorCare declined to turn over Judd's health-care records — even to his own family?

Perhaps a better question in each of those cases is: How does SeniorCare have the right to stonewall Loiacono and other family members as it has.

Judd's family — and the community at large — deserve to know the truth about SeniorCare's care, and to have confidence in it. Right now, they can't — and only a thorough state probe can lift that cloud.

Full Editorial and Source:
Editorial: SeniorCare Case Cries Out for State Investigation

Disbarred Atty Gets Two Years for Fraud

Steven P. Gartenberg, a disbarred lawyer who once had an office in Brentwood, was sentenced to two years in federal prison Friday for stealing more more than $300,000 from clients.

Gartenberg pleaded guilty in June to two counts of mail fraud. He admitted keeping more than $100,000 from a woman's estate that was supposed to go to the Kirkwood United Methodist Church, the Alzheimer's Association and three individuals and making more than $200,000 in unauthorized withdrawals from the bank account of a mentally disabled woman who was under his guardianship.

He also took money from two other clients, and later repaid them from a dead man's estate.

On Friday, Gartenberg apologized, saying, "This isn't like me. I feel much remorse for what I've done."

Under federal sentencing guidelines, Gartenberg faced 27 to 33 months in prison.

Ultimately, U.S. District Judge Rod Sippel sentenced Gartenberg to two years in prison and ordered him to repay $267,000. Most of that money will go to the Bar Plan Surety and Fidelity Company, professional liability coverage for lawyers, which paid for the guardianship victim. He also repaid a small amount himself, Margulis said.

Full Article and Source:
Disbarred Attorney Gets Two Years for Fraud

Kathleen's Demise, A Cautionary Tale

There’s much to learn about BC’s laws and eldercare system from the last years of Kathleen Palamarek’s life in a local nursing home—especially from the battles that were fought in her name between her children, care providers and the Vancouver Island Health Authority.

During Lois Sampson née Palamarek’s five-year struggle to help get her mother out of the nursing home, Kathleen became an icon to local seniors advocates. That’s why the Saanich Peninsula Health Association, Vancouver Island Association of Family Councils, Old Age Pensioners Organization local, and others have been blitzing politicians, media and public agencies with requests for an inquiry.

Full Article and Source:
Kathleen's Demise, A Cautionary Tale

See Also:
SeniorsAtRisk

'Pulling the Plug'

It is mind blogging how some people are so ready to suggest the plug should be pulled on others. What if the pluggee doesn’t want the plug pulled? Pull it anyway?

There you go. One more down. Who else can we get rid of?

The thought brings to mind a picture of an eager face with a vile grin and some drool running down the chin for good measure. “Oh look, that little old lady in Aisle 4 doesn’t have quality of life. I wouldn’t want to live that way, walking with a limp. Let’s get her. Boy, this legal murder is empowering. Look at me! I have power over life and death. Why didn’t we start doing this before now? Oh, good another one back by the frozen foods. Such a good day for plug pulling.”

Think it can’t ever happen?

Who would have thought we would ever be where we are today? Who would have thought we would be so ready to say that helpless people “aren’t in there”, and thus believe it is simply okay to starve and dehydrate them to death? Who would have thought, but that is where society has arrived at. Society is killing off the weakest without thought to those who have fallen victim to illness, injury, disability or age. It is outrageous at how cold and cruel our society has become.

It is easy to say someone has no hope, when no therapy or attempt has been made to help the person get better. It’s causing the problem and then having the problem be our supportive argument as to why not to take any positive actions.

[P]eople can’t always get better without the tools and treatment being made available to them.

They can’t wheel themselves down the hallway, if they don’t have a wheel chair to wheel.

They can’t do physical therapy if none is offered, nor anyone to tell them how.

They can’t take the necessary medications to cure their illness, if no medication is made available.

They can’t eat or drink if no food or water is provided.

They can’t look out the window if there is no window to look out of.

Simply put, people can’t get better if they aren’t allowed to get better, because all things that will (or might) make them better is denied them.

Full Article and Source:
Pulling the Plug

A Heartbreaking Story of Elder Abuse

Until relatively recently, I was unaware of how rampant elder abuse is within the legal court system. It was not until my good friend started to share her story with me that my eyes were opened to something far more prevalent than I was cognizant of; at least on a conscious level.

I have been privileged to know Diane for over five years. During that span, she has never been anything but helpful, loving and compassionate to everyone. Doing what I do for a living generally makes me able to be a pretty good judge of character. Ironically, it is a judge and his decisions that prompted me to write this article. The choices and attitude he has expressed have been protected by legal statutes. While they might be legal, they are far from moral, ethical or compassionate.

This all began approximately two and a half years ago. Diane's mother had given her power of attorney and named her the healthcare proxy. Like many families, there were disagreements with the siblings. Diane was being told that her brother and sister wanted to sell their mother's home and place her in a nursing home. While this elderly woman, Dorothy, had some early dementia and knee problems, she was still a vibrant, cognizant person. She had no interest in being displaced so that those two could have her money. Diane's family suggested she file for legal guardianship to protect her home and to protect her mother's life as well. It seemed to make an abundance of sense.

To tell the events of what unfolded quickly is really an injustice to the elder abuse that has incurred since. The siblings contested the petition for guardianship. Instead of reaching a mediated agreement, the judge listening to the case decided he would be better at making decisions for everyone. He assigned a law guardian and a healthcare manager. It appears these three have worked together before. Diane was immediately removed from what her mother wanted; to have her take care of her needs if there was any reason for it. As it was, Dorothy would spend many weekends at Diane's house. It must be noted that Diane works from home and took care of her father in his last years. It would give Dorothy a change of scenery and much appreciated love and companionship. All of that was about to change.

Full Article and Source:
A Heartbreaking Story of Elder Abuse

See Also:
NASGA: Dorothy Wilson, NY Victim

Elder Rights and the Older Americans Act

Statement by Kathy Greenlee
Assistant Secretary, Administration on Aging
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)
on Elder Rights and the Older Americans Act
before Special Committee on Aging United States Senate
Tuesday August 23, 2011
Thank you, Senator Blumenthal, for the opportunity to testify at this important hearing on elder justice. I appreciate the opportunity to share with you the Administration on Aging’s (AoA) commitment to this important issue and the role of the Older Americans Act (OAA) in helping to protect and serve victims of abuse, neglect, and exploitation. As a Federal advocate for older Americans and their concerns, AoA is dedicated to protecting the rights of older people and preventing their abuse, neglect, and exploitation.

Elder abuse is a substantial global public health and human rights problem. The World Health Organization has declared that elder abuse is a violation of one the most basic and fundamental human rights: to be safe and free of violence. In a recent nationally representative study, one in ten older Americans reported being abused or neglected in the past year, and that many of them experienced it in multiple forms.

For nearly forty years, AoA has provided continual Federal leadership in strengthening the elder justice programming designed to prevent and address elder abuse and these consequences through the OAA.

•The Long-Term Care Ombudsman Program was established in 1972 to represent the rights and advocate on behalf of older residents living in nursing homes, assisted living, and other residential settings.
•In 1987, a new objective to protect elderly from abuse, neglect, and exploitation was added to Title I of the Act. A separate authorization of funds for elderly abuse prevention services was also created under Title III Part G. This had previously been allowed, but appropriation authority not reserved.
•The National Center on Elder Abuse (NCEA) was created in 1988 as an information clearinghouse on abuse, neglect, and exploitation, including best practices in prevention and treatment, serving as a repository of research, and conducting demonstration projects to promote effective and coordinated responses to elder abuse, neglect, and exploitation.
•In 1992, the Title VII Elder Abuse, Neglect, and Exploitation Program was established to provide funding to support State and community-based elder justice networks that protect vulnerable seniors and provide them with critical information, and the NCEA received a permanent home in Title II.
•The 2006 Older Americans Act amendments added provisions in Title II for the assistant secretary on aging to designate a person for elder abuse prevention and services with the responsibility for development of plans for a coordinated, national elder justice system. In addition, Title VII’s “Elder Abuse, Neglect, and Exploitation Program” was renamed “Vulnerable Elder Rights Protection Services”, and broadened the authority for States to carry out a range of elder justice activities, such as financial literacy and elder shelters, and to initiate multidisciplinary elder justice activities.
•Most recently, the Elder Justice Act was passed and signed into law in 2010. The Elder Justice Act provides authority for additional attention in this area, including highlighting critical issues through citizen participatory advisory councils; enhancing APS programs and data; and improving the quality of care in nursing facilities through enhancements to the Long-Term Care Ombudsman Program, establishing a system to report crimes in nursing homes, and assisting States to implement criminal background check programs for employees with direct access to patients.

Full Testimony and Source:
Elder Rights and the Older Americans Act

See Also:
Senator Blumenthal's First Field Hearing as Senator