Iris Scans Come to Nursing Homes. Next Stop, Your Phone

4-25-17 Pennsylvania:

The citizens of Brevillier Village like living there. The retirement neighborhood in Erie, Pennsylvania overlooks Lake Erie, and paths dotted by benches follow the shoreline. The site presents beautiful views, and a grave menace: Just over and above the fence at the edge of the residence lies a cliff that plunges 30 ft to the water down below.

Compounding the risk, elderly citizens with progressing states of dementia reside in the making closest to the cliff. To defend them from hurt, Brevillier adopted technology more widespread in sci-fi thrillers than houses: iris scan recognition.

A biometric that most individuals associate with a specifically grisly scene in Minority Report makes a whole lot of perception for elder care. Keycodes can be hard to remember, and complicated to tap into a keypad if you experience from tremors or weak vision. Fingerprints may well operate, but your skin thins as you age, creating prints harder to browse. Moreover, a weakened immune program boosts the microbial hazard of critical pads and fingerprint viewers. All of which would make unlocking a door with your eyes fairly handy.

Assault at nursing home raises questions about why sex offender was living there

3-21-17 New York:

Thomas Moore spent more than 20 years in prison for sexually abusing hospitalized women who were elderly, disabled or incapacitated.

But when time came to release him last year, state prison officials faced a problem. Indigent and with no family, the lifelong Queens resident had nowhere to go. Prison officials struggled to find a facility willing to accept the 62-year-old disabled sex offender. Indeed, Moore stayed at the Fishkill Correctional Facility three months longer than he was supposed to as the state shopped around his application.

Moore had no previous connection to Western New York, but late last year he was accepted at Waterfront Rehabilitation and Healthcare Center in Buffalo – where he lived surrounded by elderly, disabled and incapacitated women.

Barely a month after he moved into Waterfront, Moore was arrested and charged with sexually abusing a fellow resident in her bed.

"It was like throwing the fox in the hen house,” said Dr. Charles P. Ewing of the University at Buffalo, an attorney and forensic psychologist who has studied sex offenders and the law.

Authorities accused Moore of entering the room of another Waterfront resident at about midnight on Jan. 3, pulling off her blanket and molesting her. Police arrested Moore nine days later, charging him with sexual abuse of a person incapable of giving consent and with endangering the welfare of a physically disabled person.

Editorial: Sex-offender notification falls victim to lobbying

11-28-2016 Iowa:

Sometimes it’s hard to tell when politicians are grandstanding, pandering to the crowds and playing to the cameras.

It’s hard because such scripted statements may also be grounded in truth and genuine sincerity. Just because there’s sizzle doesn’t mean there’s no steak on the plate. But there are occasions when the words of politicians are completely at odds with their own actions, and the words are revealed to be pure window-dressing.

Take the controversy over Iowa’s practice of placing sex offenders and violent criminals in Iowa care facilities alongside elderly and disabled adults.

For years, Statehouse politicians and Gov. Terry Branstad have decried the situation, wrung their hands and then failed to act — even as vulnerable adults were sexually abused and even murdered by fellow residents known to have posed a threat to others.

Granted, this is not a particularly easy issue to address. Sex offenders and violent criminals age just like the rest of us, and many of them eventually need 24-hour care. Ideally, they would be placed in either a dedicated facility for high-risk individuals, or placed in the secure wing, with close monitoring, of a traditional care facility. Both solutions entail additional spending.

As things stand now, many of these individuals are simply placed with the general population of care-facility residents, with no additional oversight.

Nursing home for prison inmates opening in Milledgeville

12-20-16 Georgia:

A former prison doctor has opened a nursing home that will take up to 280 elderly and infirm inmates who otherwise might not have a place to go when they’re paroled.

“Even for a person who has no health issues, finding appropriate housing when on parole can be very, very complicated,” said Sara Totonchi, executive director of the Southern Center for Human Rights. “When you add in health issues or mobility issues or other challenges it can be nearly impossible to find.”

The Bostick Nursing Center in Milledgeville, on the site of a demolished prison, is the first in Georgia that was conceived specifically for parolees. It will begin accepting parolee-residents early next year.

There were already three nursing homes in South Georgia that accepted parolees but catered to the general public — in Montrose, Byromville and Pineview. With no spaces specifically set aside for one-time prisoners, parolees are accepted only if there is room; each has between 10 and 20 parolees in residence and at least two of them cannot take sex offenders. Messages left at the three nursing homes were not returned.

Nursing home fined more than $1.3 million

4-9-2013 Oklahoma:

ENID, Okla. — An Enid nursing home has been fined more than $1.3 million for not taking appropriate actions when a registered sex offender who was a patient there had inappropriate contact with other residents.

Oklahoma State Department of Health inspectors cited numerous deficiencies on March 8 when they surveyed Kenwood Manor, 502 W. Pine, a nursing home licensed for 45 beds. Three of those deficiencies were deemed “a pattern ... that constitutes immediate jeopardy to resident health and safety.”

Dorya Huser, chief of Long Term Care for the Protective Health Services division of OSDH, said the March inspection was triggered by a complaint regarding the resident’s behavior. Documents from the Department of Health and Human Services show the original complaint to the state Health Department was anonymous.

According to the Enid Police Department’s sex offender web page, Charles “Charley” Herbert Willson’s address at Kenwood Manor was last verified in January.

Kenwood Manor is about two blocks northeast of Emerson Middle School.

Evictions from Nursing Homes Stopped Sheriffs Agree not to Force Elderly and Severely Disabled People onto the Streets

10-30-2006 Georgia:

ATLANTA , GEORGIA, HB 1059, Georgia’s sex offender legislation, has taken another hit as Sheriffs in several counties agree not to enforce a portion of the law.

Two weeks ago, lawyers from the Southern Center for Human Rights (SCHR) and the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia filed a Motion for Preliminary Injunction on behalf of nine elderly and/or severely disabled people on the registry. This Motion specifically addressed the provision of HB 1059 that prevents people on the registry from living within 1,000 feet of a church. Because of their advanced age and/or physical condition, these plaintiffs are not a danger to anyone, yet the residency restrictions of HB 1059 make no exception for them.

Attorneys and the Sheriffs in the counties where the plaintiffs live have reached agreements that elderly and disabled individuals named in the Motion will not be evicted from their homes, nursing homes, and hospice care facilities. These agreements will allow these elderly and ill people to live the remainder of their lives with dignity, receiving appropriate medical care and attention to their conditions.

“Once again, the Georgia Legislature’s ‘one size fits all’ policy for the treatment of people on the registry takes us into the realm of absurdity,” states Sarah Geraghty, an attorney at SCHR representing the plaintiffs. “Sheriffs are now required by law to evict Alzheimer’s patients and the terminally ill from their nursing homes if these facilities are within 1/5 of a mile of a church. Never mind that some of these patients cannot even stand up, or walk without assistance.”

TARGET 11: Pa. nursing homes not required to notify patients, families when sex offenders move in

2-10-16 Pennsylvania:

PITTSBURGH — While some states have passed laws requiring nursing homes to notify patients and families when a registered sex offender moves in, a Target 11 investigation revealed that no such law exists in Pennsylvania.

Staff at the nursing homes may not even know because the state only notifies them when a sexually violent predator moves in.

Target 11's Rick Earle took the addresses of nursing homes and cross referenced them to the addresses of registered sex offenders on the Megan’s Law website in order to find which local nursing homes have sex offenders as residents.

Norman Carl Nelson, who was convicted of rape in 1989, is one local sex offender who lists his address as a nursing home in Wilkinsburg.

Stacie Coates, who worked at the nursing home for several months, said she didn’t know Nelson was a registered sex offender.

“I had heard there was few in there. (But) I didn't know for sure,” she told Earle.

While it doesn’t bother her to learn that she was working around a sex offender, Coates said she would think twice about putting a loved one in the home.

“Well, now that I know that, I probably wouldn't,” she said. “I wouldn't do that.”

Others Earle found on the Megan’s Law website living at local nursing homes included Walter William Boyd on Pittsburgh’s North Side, John Thomas Spencer in Monroeville, Peary Lee Weikel in Beaver and John Robert Randall in Cranberry Township.

“They talk about it being the only crime they don't age out of. Also I'm assuming if someone's in a nursing home, they're health is compromised. So I guess it would be interesting to see how mobile they are, how ambulatory they are,” Alison Hall, with Pittsburgh Action Against Rape, said.

A study by “A Perfect Cause,” a nursing home advocacy group, in 2005 found that there were 1,600 registered sex offenders in long-term care facilities across the country, and they documented more than 60 crimes, including rapes and assaults.

Target 11 reached out to all of the local nursing home where sex offenders were found to be living but only heard back from the North Side location, which issued the following statement:

“We do not feel that any patients, staff or visitors are currently at risk. If the possible issue of a sexual predator residing in the facility occurred, we would communicate the information to our families and residents while protecting patient privacy.”

Target 11 spoke with Pittsburgh attorney Rob Peirce, who handles elderly and nursing home abuse cases, about what advice he’d offer to those looking to place a loved one in a nursing home.

“It's simple for someone to go and look at the facility. Is it clean? Is it dirty? But you can't just put a loved one in a convenient location,” he said. “You must look into the background of that facility as best you can, the employees and who may be staying there.”

As for the reliance of the self-reporting Megan’s Law website, law enforcement officials told Earle that they do random compliance checks.

Last year alone, officers checked more than 2,000 addresses across Pennsylvania and found only 40 offenders who were not in compliance. Police said the non-compliance rate stands at less than 2 percent. ..Source.. by WPIX.com

Sex offenders at Clarinda institute taken off registry

2-2-15 Iowa:

Clarinda, Ia. – Four elderly sex offenders who live at the state mental health institute here have been taken off Iowa's public sex-offender registry, raising fears that state officials will quietly transfer the offenders to private nursing homes should the facility be closed.

Opponents of the planned hospital closure have been buzzing about the four offenders' rumored removal from the online registry. State officials confirmed the deletions Monday, but said the action was unrelated to the possible closure of the mental hospital.

Karin Hamilton, a Department of Public Safety administrator who oversees the registry, said her department has removed about 100 sex offenders' names from the public website in the past two months or so. The deletions were due to legal questions over who should be placed on the registry, she said.

The deleted names included the four sex offenders who are committed to a locked unit at the Clarinda mental hospital, she said. The review determined that "incarcerated" offenders need not be listed, she said.

That explanation doesn't wash with Becky Rassler, whose 95-year-old mother was molested repeatedly by one of the offenders now living at the Clarinda institution. William Cubbage, a four-time convicted sex offender, sexually abused Rassler's mother, Mercedes Gottschalk, at a Pomeroy nursing home in 2011.

Gottschalk's family didn't know that Cubbage and another sex offender were living in the nursing home. They only found out after an 8-year-old visitor to the facility reported seeing Cubbage molest Gottschalk and hearing the elderly woman cry out, "No! No! No!"

Ex-Clarinda patients sent to range of nursing homes

8-9-15 Iowa:

Karen Wininger keeps raising a fear to the staff at her new nursing home. Several times a day, she asks if she's going to be taken somewhere else.

The 75-year-old woman expresses her anxiety in a voice so soft it's barely audible. Davis Center staff members lean down to her wheelchair, sometimes putting their ears inches from her mouth when she speaks.

They reassure her, time and again, that she can stay.

The patient, who decades ago was a nurse, gives a wan smile to the staff. But her anxiety will bubble back up, and she'll ask again: Am I going to be taken away?

Until this spring, Wininger was one of 18 residents at a state program for elderly people with serious mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia. The program was housed at the Iowa Mental Health Institute at Clarinda, which Gov. Terry Branstad ordered closed earlier this year, saying it was outdated and inefficient. More than half the residents were sent to private nursing homes.

Supporters of the Clarinda program said it cared for some of the frailest and most complicated psychiatric patients in the state. Wininger was one of two residents who wound up at the Davis Center, a well-rated nursing home that specializes in handling elderly people with mental illness.

Clarinda mental hospital patient dies after transfer

4-14-15 Iowa:

One of the first patients transferred out of the state mental hospital at Clarinda in preparation for its closure died less than three weeks later, his family confirmed Tuesday.

Richard Webb, 87, was a longtime resident of the institution, which is one of two that the state is shuttering. Critics say the swift closures could endanger vulnerable Iowans who have severe mental problems.

Webb had an advanced case of Alzheimer's disease, his family said. He was admitted to the Clarinda facility several years ago after private nursing homes determined he was too agitated to handle.

He was transferred to a Shenandoah nursing home March 25, and he died Sunday.

His daughter-in-law, Paula Webb of Kellerton, said he had suffered repeated bouts of pneumonia, which might have recurred recently. When asked whether she believed his transfer hastened his death, she replied: "It's really hard to say." However, she said that as a retired nurse, she knows firsthand that moving to a new place can be especially stressful for frail, elderly people.

Sex offenders being moved to Independence hospital

6-19-15 Iowa:

Four elderly sex offenders who live at the state mental hospital at Clarinda will soon be transferred to another state facility before the Clarinda hospital closes, a state spokeswoman confirmed Friday.

The Iowa Department of Human Services is winding down operations at the Mental Health Institutes at Clarinda and Mount Pleasant. The controversial closure plan was disclosed in January by Gov. Terry Branstad, who contends the two state hospitals' services could be provided more efficiently in private facilities or at the state's other two mental hospitals.

One of the biggest hurdles to the plan has been the question of what to do with the four convicted sex offenders in the Clarinda hospital's unit for elderly psychiatric patients. Initially, Department of Human Services officials suggested some of the four men might be moved into private facilities, such as a nursing home. But the department then said it wouldn't allow them to be placed into a regular nursing home unit with other residents.

Department spokeswoman Amy McCoy said Friday that the four will soon be moved to the state mental hospital at Independence. She said the department still is looking for future ways to handle other such residents in a specialized private facility.

Private unit considered for mentally ill seniors

3-26-2015 Iowa:

The Iowa Health Care Association, which represents most of the state's nursing homes, has shown interest in helping set up a small private facility for senior citizens with mental illnesses that make them aggressive.

Although no such program has been formally proposed, the association recently sent the Iowa Department of Human Services an estimate of what it might cost.

The association figures that to start such a facility, a nursing home would need $300,000 for remodeling costs, plus about $422 per day for each resident. The per-day rate is less than half the $857 that state administrators say they're now spending on patients in a geriatric mental health program at the public institution at Clarinda, which is closing. But it is more than twice the $160 per day the state Medicaid program pays nursing homes on average to care for other elderly residents.

Nursing home study for dangerous patients passes Iowa Senate

3-12-15 Iowa:

A legislative interim study committee would be created to study the establishment of one or more nursing home units for the treatment of persons who are sexually aggressive, combative or who have other geriatric mental health needs, under a bill approved Thursday by the Iowa Senate.

The Senate voted 48-0 for Senate File 386. Sen. Amanda Ragan, D-Mason City, said state officials have struggled with the issue for years about how to care for persons whose sexual or physical aggression poses a danger to other residents. The issue has received increased attention recently because of the Gov. Terry Branstad’s plans to close the Clarinda Mental Health Institute, which has housed four elderly sex offenders in a locked unit. ..Source.. by William Petroski,

House looks at sex offender long-term care

3-4-15 Iowa:

A bill offered in the Iowa House last week would establish “one or more” facilities that may cause concern for residents of any community in which such a facility is operated.

House File 399 was offered Wednesday by state Rep. Helen Miller (D-Fort Dodge) and co-sponsored by 12 of her Democratic colleagues. It requires the Iowa Department of Human Services to establish at least one facility in Iowa to provide housing and care to Tier II and Tier III sex offenders in need of “medical and personal care,” but are unable to be admitted to a private facility due to their status as sex offenders.

The type of care would be typical of that provided at a residential care facility, a nursing home, or in an assisted living center. The bill would allow DHS to “use or establish a state facility” – a possible new role for the soon-to-be-shuttered mental health institutes in Clarinda and Mount Pleasant – or contract with a private provider.

HF 399 provides for an application and verification process for DHS, as well as a process to determine payment options. Medicaid is declared to be the payor of last resort.

The Iowa Nurses Association, the Iowa School Nurses Organization, and AFSCME Iowa Council 61 all support the proposed legislation. The Iowa Department on Aging, the Long-Term Care Ombudsman’s Office, the Iowa Council of Health Care Centers, the Iowa Department of Inspections and Appeals, the Iowa Medical Society, the Justice Reform Consortium, AARP of Iowa, the Iowa Association of Area Agencies on Aging, the Iowa Behavioral Health Association, the Iowa Coalition Against Sexual Assault, and the Iowa Primary Care Association are all “undecided” on the bill. ..Source.. byBob Eschliman

Study Exposes Nursing Home Residents’ Aggression Against Each Other

1-7-2015 Ohio:

COLUMBUS, Ohio--When people talk about abuse in nursing homes, they generally are referring to staff members victimizing the elderly.

But researchers say an even more pressing, prevalent problem might be the violence that can — and does — erupt between residents.

According to a new study by Cornell University, nearly one in five people living in nursing homes is involved in at least one aggressive encounter each month.

“These altercations are widespread and common in everyday nursing-home life,” said Karl Pillemer, PhD, a professor at Cornell and at the Weill Cornell Medical College and a co-author of the study.

Staff Often Unaware

Resident-to-resident mistreatment is under-reported to the point that, at some long-term-care centers, “staff members seem almost unaware,” Pillemer said.

Nursing homes provide care for about 1.5 million older Americans nationwide, including about 90,000 in Ohio. By 2030, the number of U.S. adults 65 and older will more than double, to about 71 million.

Nursing home residents’ aggression is studied

12-13-2014 National:

When people talk about abuse in nursing homes, they generally are referring to staff members victimizing the elderly. But researchers say an even more pressing, prevalent problem might be the violence that can — and does — erupt between residents.

According to a new study by Cornell University, nearly 1 in 5 people living in nursing homes is involved in at least one aggressive encounter each month.

“These altercations are widespread and common in everyday nursing-home life,” said Karl Pillemer, who is a professor at Cornell and at the Weill Cornell Medical College and a co-author of the study.

Resident-to-resident mistreatment is under-reported to the point that, at some long-term-care centers, “staff members seem almost unaware,” Pillemer said.

Nursing homes provide care for about 1.5 million older Americans nationwide, including about 90,000 in Ohio. By 2030, the number of U.S. adults 65 and older will more than double, to about 71 million.

Research has mostly focused on older adults who have been mistreated by their family and caregivers in the community or by staff members in nursing homes, said Dr. Mark Lachs, who is the other author of the report and a professor of medicine at Cornell’s medical college.

DOC Discussing Possible Nursing Home For Aging Prison Population

10-29-2014 Oklahoma:

The Department of Corrections has begun preliminary talks with a nursing home operator concerning the possibility of contracting with a facility to house aging state inmates, the Senate Public Safety Committee was told Tuesday.

Dr. William Cooper, the department’s chief medical officer, said the department was approached by a nursing home operations firm about the possibility of contracting with the department. The discussions are in the very early stages.

According to Wes Bledsoe, a nursing home client advocate with the group A Perfect Cause, legislation passed in 2008 permits the department of contract with a nursing home for the housing registered sex offenders. “That could be expanded to cover other offenders,” he said.

The men testified during a hearing on Interim Study S14-039, a study on the impact of an aging prison population at the Department of Corrections. The study was requested by Sen. Wayne Shaw, R-Grove.

Problem nursing home in Fayette County closes its doors

2-14-2014 Ohio:

A long-troubled nursing home in southwestern Ohio — the one that was home to more registered sex offenders than any other in the state — has officially closed.

The last one of 131 residents at Carlton Manor in Washington Court House in Fayette County was moved today.

Carlton Manor had become the state’s de facto nursing home for people who were difficult to place. In addition to 27 registered sex offenders living there, nearly all the other residents had some sort of behavioral, psychological or mental-health problem. Many had a history of violent or aggressive behavior and some had criminal backgrounds.

The Ohio Department of Health, which licenses nursing homes, said in January it was revoking the home’s license because of a series of failed inspections and a history of trouble, which included not reporting suspected sexual abuse and improperly restraining residents. The government has pulled the home’s Medicaid and Medicare funding.

Of the 131 residents in the facility when the state ordered the closure, 99 moved to other nursing facilities; 21 went to developmental-disability centers; four were placed in mental-health group homes; three moved home; and four died of natural causes.

Finding new homes for all the residents went more smoothly than expected, said Tessie Pollock, spokeswoman for the Ohio Department of Health.

Are nursing homes high-need residents at high risk?

1-26-2014 Ohio:

Each time they visited the nursing home, state inspectors filled dozens of pages with what they say went wrong: A man wouldn’t take his medications because he thought communists were trying to kill him, so employees held him down and injected him. Ailing residents had to use the stairs because the elevator had been broken for months. The place was dirty and smelled of urine.

The records for Carlton Manor nursing home, which is facing imminent shutdown, say that a man threatened a nurse with a radio antenna; another punched his roommate in the face. One, with a history of sexual abuse, fondled the breasts of a woman with developmental disabilities.

The diagnoses for the residents, listed not by name but by assigned numbers, include schizophrenia, explosive personality disorder, traumatic brain injury, bipolar disorder, alcoholism, habitual cocaine use and suicidal.

Among the 130 people living at Carlton Manor in Washington Court House are 27 registered sex offenders — at least 10 of them rapists and at least eight who have been convicted of sex crimes in other states — and many other residents who have violent backgrounds. There is a man who once tried to murder his landlord, another who attacked several young children.

As the state moves to close the Fayette County nursing home because of repeated violations, everyone involved seems to agree on this: Such a group of people deserves high-quality care, but how to best achieve that is complicated.

Almost no one disputes that housing such a high number of people with so many needs in one facility is not a good idea.

And as the state looks for new homes for the residents, it rekindles a debate over whether Ohio’s sex-offender law should be changed so that other nursing-home residents or their caregivers are notified when a sex offender moves in. Past attempts to change the notification law have failed.

Moving people out of nursing homes proves to be difficult, despite federal funding

10-23-2012 Maryland:

After nearly two years in a Baltimore nursing home, Sonia Savage was eager to leave. She was in her late 20s, surrounded by older people and feeling “it wasn’t a place for me.”

Savage had suffered a traumatic brain injury, a stroke and broken bones after being struck by a car in 2009 while crossing the street with her 7-year-old daughter, who died after the crash. Now 30 years old, she still uses a wheelchair and walker but is in her own house, outfitted for the handicapped. “It was a new beginning,” said Savage.

Savage is one of 1,336 disabled or elderly low-income Marylanders who as of early July had moved out of nursing homes and other institutional settings as part of a national program called Money Follows the Person. The goal is to return them to the community.

Maryland’s program is doing well compared with efforts in most of the 43 participating states and the District, having already moved 55 percent of its original target of 2,413. But the same is not true for the District and Virginia, where there are fewer stories like Sonia Savage’s. As of July 2, only 126 people had moved in the District, just 11 percent of its original five-year goal of 1,110. In Virginia, where the latest figures are from May, 362 people had moved, 35 percent of the original goal of 1,041.

Many states have fallen far short of early, optimistic projections. Five years into the program, about 22,500 people nationwide have left institutional settings and transitioned back into community settings. The states’ goal had been 35,380, a target that federal officials now say was unrealistic.

Officials at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, which administers the program, concede that it got off to a slow start. They say that many states had to create community- and home-based care systems from scratch. Some ran up against a shortage of home health workers, which many participants need. Some did not anticipate the bureaucratic challenges, such as negotiating contracts with local nonprofits to help with transitions.

Congress has authorized $4 billion for the program through September 2016. To date, the federal government has paid or committed to pay $1 billion to the states, most of which set up their programs by the end of 2008. Maryland was awarded up to $67.1 million for the first five years; Virginia, $28.6 million; and the District, $26.3 million. None has received all the allotted money, as there have been fewer participants than expected.

Money Follows the Person covers the elderly, adults with physical disabilities, the developmentally disabled and the mentally ill. Participants must choose to return to the community and be enrolled in Medicaid, the state-federal program for the poor and disabled. Transition coordinators assist them with moving into apartments, houses, small group homes or, in some cases, assisted living facilities. ...continued... by Jenni Bergal