APD to close elderly abuse investigation

The Austin Police Department investigation will soon close regarding a nurse aide at Windsor Nursing and Rehabilitation Center on Duval in North Austin.

No charges are filed.

A 23-year-old Pflugerville certified nurse aide is accused of posting Snapchat videos of himself taunting an 83-year-old woman with a feather, making her smear feces on her face.

APD Detective Lee Knouse said he could not comment on the specifics of this case, but told us how they work cases like these.

He said social media sites, like Snapchat, are not always enough evidence for an arrest because the user could claim someone was using the account without permission.

But don’t let that stop you from alerting police to criminal acts.

“We would ask as a police department for you to be a good neighbor and reach out to the police department. If you can, retain any information. Save any video you can that would aid in a criminal investigation later,” said Knouse.

Austin Police do not typically handles cases regarding abuse allegations between facility workers and the elderly. The Texas Attorney General’s Office handles criminal matters. The Texas Department of Aging and Disability Services (DADS) handles licensing regulations.

“Even though the police department may not have something with a criminal offense, that could land someone in jail, we want to make sure that the child or elderly is safe. the people who can do that would be DADS or other individuals we work with who could keep that individual safe,” said Knouse.

DADS confirmed their investigation is still open.

“Nursing facilities are required to follow regulations and statutes pertaining to offenses and criminal history checks,” said Kelli Weldon, Assistant Press Officer for the Texas Health & Human Services Commission, which is the state agency over DADS.

“Our regulatory authority is generally focused on the facility rather than individuals. Note: If an investigator confirms during an investigation that a nurse aide committed an act of abuse, neglect, exploitation or misappropriation of a resident or resident property the nurse aide will be referred to the Nurse Aide Registry for due process. If the at the end of due process the referral is upheld, the nurse aide’s certification will be revoked and he/she will be listed on the Employee Misconduct Registry as permanently unemployable in certain facilities in the state of Texas,” said Weldon.

KVUE reached out to the Texas Attorney General’s office Friday afternoon. They could not confirm nor deny an open investigation before this update. A spokesman said they will provide an update next week.

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APD to close elderly abuse investigation

Elder abuse on social media sites rising and causing concern

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- When Jacksonville attorney Steve Watrel was looking for a nursing home for his father, he took into consideration something he'd never had to before.

"How do we deal with degrading, humiliating photos by nursing home employees?" Watrel, who litigates cases against nursing homes, says.

It happened last week in Ohio. A former nursing home worker was arrested for allegedly performing lewd acts and exposing herself to a 100-year-old resident with dementia. A fellow employee caught the whole thing on video and turned it over to authorities.

"You've got some younger people thinking this is kind of a funny thing, some of them should never be working in a nursing home, and you've got frail seniors, so that's a real big issue right now," Watrel says.

In many of the cases documented so far, workers who care for elderly take a video of something inappropriate. Sometimes the videos are recorded at a nursing home and other times when caretakers are working with elderly who live alone.

Then, workers are posting the videos to social media sites like Instagram and Facebook, degrading a vulnerable population even more as the video gets shared.

"Who would have thought that someone would use social media in this way?" said Linda Levin, Executive Director at ElderSource.

A database created by watchdog ProPublica shows social media abuse is on the rise. They've tracked 47 incidents since 2012, not counting the most recent one in Ohio.

"I think we'll probably see more of that and our hope at ElderSource is that people who find these things happening, or hear of it, report them," Levin says.

Reports of abuse, including those that happen online, can be made confidentially in Florida.

Still, Levin says abuse issues are historically under reported. "It completely crosses the line, when you're using something that's meant for good, and use it to hurt people who are vulnerable and don't have the opportunity to protect themselves," she says.

Watrel says he believes laws that hold elder care workers accountable need to catch up with online vulnerability. "I think a specific law should be passed, a criminal law, to deal with this specific issue."

In the meantime, he says ask facilities and care works about their social media policy in an effort to keep loved ones safe.

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Elder abuse on social media sites rising and causing concern

Federal Health Officials Seek to Stop Social Media Abuse of Nursing Home Residents

This story was co-published with NPR's Shots blog.

Federal health regulators have announced plans to crack down on nursing home employees who take demeaning photographs and videos of residents and post them on social media.

The move follows a series of ProPublica reports that have documented abuses in nursing homes and assisted living centers using social media platforms such as Snapchat, Facebook and Instagram.  These include photos and videos of residents who were naked, covered in feces or even deceased.  They also include images of abuse.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which oversees nursing homes, said in a memo to state health departments on Friday that they should begin checking to make sure that all nursing homes have policies prohibiting staff from taking demeaning photographs of residents. The memo also calls on state officials to quickly investigate such complaints and report offending workers to state licensing agencies for investigation and possible discipline. State health departments help enforce nursing home rules for the federal government.

“Nursing homes must establish an environment that is as homelike as possible and includes a culture and environment that treats each resident with respect and dignity,” said the memo signed by David Wright, director of the CMS survey and certification group. “Treating a nursing home resident in any manner that does not uphold a resident’s sense of self-worth and individuality dehumanizes the resident and creates an environment that perpetuates a disrespectful and/or potentially abusive attitude towards the resident(s).”

CMS said that nursing homes have a responsibility to protect residents’ privacy, to prohibit abuse, to provide training on how to prevent abuse, and to investigate all allegations of abuse. If homes fail to do so, they can face citations, fines and theoretically even termination from the Medicare program.

Also last week, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, called on other federal agencies to take action on the problem. He sent letters to the U.S. Department of Justice and to the Office for Civil Rights within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services asking whether “rules and protections are in place to prevent and punish these types of abuses.” He also has sent letters to social media companies, calling on them to pay more attention to this. The Office for Civil Rights is working on its own guidance related to social media but hasn’t released it yet.

In a statement to ProPublica, Grassley praised the new CMS memo. “This guidance is welcome and necessary,” he wrote. “Nursing homes are obligated under the law to keep their residents free from abuse. Exploitation on social media is a form of abuse, and the agency memo makes that clear. We need to prevent it, and we need to punish it when it happens.”

ProPublica has identified 47 instances since 2012 in which workers at nursing homes and assisted-living centers shared photos or videos of residents on social media networks. This includes three discovered in recent weeks. At one Los Angeles nursing home, an employee took video of a coworker “passing gas” on the face of a resident and posted it on Instagram, according to a May inspection report.

“An interview was conducted with Resident 1 and the resident stated that facility employees pass gas in his face as often as every month,” the report said. One employee resigned and a police report was filed.

While some states have taken harsh steps against nursing homes at which social media abuse occurs, other states have not. We reported last month that Iowa health officials recently discovered it wasn’t against state law for a nursing home worker to share a photo on Snapchat of a resident covered in feces because his genitals weren’t visible. Officials are trying to change the law when the Iowa Legislature reconvenes early next year.

The federal government memo sets uniform standards for how such abuse should be written up by inspectors and the severity of sanctions that should be levied. In the past, there was great variability.

Last month, the industry’s trade group issued its own suggestions for dealing with such situations, encouraging training and swift responses by these facilities when allegations are brought to light. The group also is holding training events around the country. While many facilities ban the use or possession of cell phones by employees when in resident areas, some have also found such rules impractical to enforce.

Greg Crist, a spokesman for the American Health Care Association, the trade group, said the CMS memo dovetails with the industry’s effort to stop social media abuse.

“The two words in that CMS directive that stand out most to me are ‘privacy’ and ’responsibility,’” Crist wrote in an email Monday. “That’s why we have taken responsibility and made a concerted, nationwide effort to educate and share best practices with our centers not only on how to detect and root out this abuse, but also proactive steps to ensure it doesn’t happen in the first place.

“It’s not an issue that is conquered overnight, but every day, we get smarter about it."

Has your medical privacy been compromised? Help ProPublica investigate by filling out a short questionnaire. You can also read other stories in our Policing Patient Privacy series.

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Federal Health Officials Seek to Stop Social Media Abuse of Nursing Home Residents