This article examines a highly unusual case and also suggests what nursing facilities can expect from government regulators.
Additionally, the facility’s former chief executive officer was charged with eight felony counts of elder abuse. According to the AG, she “allowed the staff to forcibly administer psychotropic medications to patients for their own convenience, rather than for their patients’ therapeutic interests.” [1]
In a gross deviation from accepted standards of care, Hughes, as DON, would initiate Interdisciplinary Team (IDT) meetings where she directed the pharmacist to write prescriptions for antipsychotic drugs for residents she considered “troublesome.” Apart from the obvious problem with a nurse ordering drugs, Hughes ordered those drugs “not for therapeutic reasons, but instead to control and quiet them for the convenience of the staff.” But Hughes had willing accomplices. The pharmacist wrote the orders and the nurses administered the medication to the residents. For his part, Dr. Hoshang Pormir, the former medical director, signed the orders after the IDT meeting—sometimes, three weeks after the medication was given. Moreover, he neglected to examine the residents to determine if the psychotropic medications were medically necessary, according to the AG.
Astonishingly, when a resident refused the medications, she was “held down and injected with the psychotropic medicine by force.” According to a state investigator, “it took 4 or 5 staff to hold [the resident] down to administer the injection [Risperdal] against her will.” Three residents died as a result of the “convenience drugging,” while the others suffered serious adverse effects such as weight loss, lethargy, confusion and dehydration, according to official documents.
Former Attorney General Edmund G. Brown, Jr., stated, “As [nursing home] administrator, Pamela Ott was ultimately responsible for safeguarding the welfare of her patients.
Full Article and Source:
Inappropriate Use of Psychotropic Drugs Lands Former DoN in Prison, Others Plead No Contest
And that's the only case in AMerica?
ReplyDeleteIt gives us hope that the world is finally catching on!
ReplyDeleteFive or six residents died in Scott Schuett's facilities -- a man in a wheelchair run over by a car in the middle of a six lane road at night, an elderly lady beaten by a seriously mentally ill four-time felon, another hit by a car wandering down the road, a diabetic with sky-high blood sugar readings sent to bed instead of to the hospital, etc., etc., etc.
ReplyDeleteAnd yet Scott Schuett is still walking around a free man, griping that he was the victim of overzealous government agencies.
In fact, the opposite is true. Government agencies and officials covered up for Scott Schuett, made excuses for Scott Schuett, tried against all that is right and holy to keep Scott Schuett's six facilities with 400 victims open, and even now deliberately lie and misstate the FACTS as to when they learned of the horrors perpetrated by Scott Schuett and what they did about it. (Hint: not a damn thing.)
We need an immediate criminal investigation of Scott Schuett and the numerous government officials, attorneys, hand-picked guardian ad litem, and public guardianship programs that enabled and covered up these felonies.
Now.