Proposal to probe elder deaths receiving little pushback in Florida Legislature

Proposals to create teams to review deaths of the elderly when abuse or neglect is suspected and to prevent future deaths are moving forward with little pushback in the Florida Legislature.

Elder advocates say establishing elder death review teams in Florida could help cut down on the number of cases of nursing home neglect and mistreatment like those identified in a recent USA TODAY NETWORK – FLORIDA investigation.

The proposal, included in Senate Bill 452 by state Sen. Audrey Gibson, D-Jacksonville, has unanimously passed three committees since mid-February with little discussion. Most recently, the Senate’s Governmental Oversight and Accountability committee approved it March 26.

 

Police officers talk to an employee at the Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hills in Hollywood, Fla., Wednesday, Sept. 13, 2017. Several patients at the sweltering nursing home died in Hurricane Irma's aftermath, authorities said. The nursing home lost power during Hurricane Irma.(Photo: AP Photo/Marta Lavandier)

The bill would allow, but not mandate, the creation of elder death review teams in each of Florida’s 20 judicial circuits. The teams would review cases in their judicial circuit where abuse or neglect has been found to be related to or the cause of an elderly person’s death.

“I believe this task force and the team is critically important to the state,” Gibson said when explaining her bill to the Senate’s Children, Families and Elder Affairs committee in February.

As part of its investigation, the USA TODAY NETWORK - FLORIDA reviewed 54 nursing home deaths where state inspectors cited neglect and mistreatment as factors from 2013 through 2017. The network investigation found Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration rarely took action and often didn’t investigate the deaths at all.

The network’s nursing homes series also showed that AHCA rarely takes serious action against poor-performing nursing homes, and it has allowed dozens of Florida nursing homes to limp along for years providing substandard care, and abusing, neglecting and even killing patients with little consequence.

Gibson’s bill would limit reviews to closed cases and to deaths where abuse or neglect has been verified by a state attorney, a potential roadblock that could prevent probing of many nursing home deaths in Florida. State attorneys didn’t prosecute any of the 54 nursing home deaths reviewed in the network's investigation.

The goal of the elder death review teams would be to identify problems or gaps in service, to recommend solutions, and to author annual summaries of their findings, according to the bill.

The teams would be comprised of volunteers from a variety of vocations, including attorneys, police officers, medical examiners, nurses and members of the state’s Long-Term Care Ombudsman program. The teams would be housed, administratively, in the Department of Elder Affairs, but would be initiated by states attorneys in the judicial circuits.

The only expected expenses of the program would be administrative costs incurred by the Department of Elder Affairs, according to a Florida Senate analysis of the bill.

The Alzheimer’s Association supported Gibson’s proposal during a Judiciary Committee hearing in mid-March.

“Anything we can do to support our most vulnerable population is going to be good. And I think this is a good way to support them,” Michelle Branham, the association’s vice president of public policy in Florida, said in an interview.

This is the third year in a row Gibson has sponsored elder death review team legislation. Her efforts failed during the last two legislative sessions.

A companion bill by Rep. Barbara Watson, D-Miami Gardens, unanimously passed its first House committee Monday, March 25. Watson stressed that the purpose of the bill is to learn from closed cases, not to re-investigate them.

“We’re just looking at the ability to find the best practices, and how we can learn from what has transpired in the past,” she told the House Children, Families and Seniors subcommittee.

The Florida Legislature established the Child Abuse Death Review Committee in 1999, with the goal of reducing child deaths in the state. Ten years later the state established domestic violence death review teams in response to an increase in domestic violence-related homicides in Florida.

But there is no comparable review when an elderly or vulnerable adult dies in Florida, even under suspicious circumstances.

The same year Florida created its committee to review child deaths, the U.S. Department of Justice recommended the development of death review teams for the elderly. But unlike child death review teams, which exist in every state, only 13 states have established elder death review teams, according to The National Center for Fatality Review and Prevention in Washington, D.C.

Florida is not among them.

The Women's Center in Jacksonville is in the planning stages of an elder fatality review team pilot project examining closed criminal cases involving elder abuse, neglect and exploitation. But the team would not look at a nursing home case where there was no criminal prosecution, even if there was a finding of neglect by Florida's Department of Children and Families or another state agency.

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Proposal to probe elder deaths receiving little pushback in Florida Legislature