The windy city of Chicago, Illinois, has many nursing homes. Some of them, unfortunately, fail to protect their elderly and infirm patients from nursing home abuse. The Illinois Department of Public Health recently released a statement affirming that a nursing home was cited and fined $2,200 for the financial abuse of one of their resident.
The nursing home failed to protect the resident from the financial abuse, which was perpetuated by one of their staff members. Additionally, the nursing home failed to properly supervise the personal care and nursing that was necessary to ensure the well-being of the resident. The administrator of the nursing home, who was hired after the incident occurred, said that he is not aware of the Illinois Department of Public Health’s report about the matter or the $2,200 fine.
The report states that the resident subjected to the financial abuse by a staff member was a woman who was admitted to the nursing home in March 2015 after being diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Two months later, in June 2015, the resident’s mother was contacted by the nursing home director of social services, who wanted to talk about a long-term care plan.
That might have been business as usual if it had been the only topic, but the director also wanted to talk about the resident’s home potentially being sold. According to the report, the resident got upset, and wanted to get stronger so that she could return to her home.
The next chapter of the story made things far worse. In July 2015, the nursing home’s business office manager told the resident that her home had to be sold. Further, he recommended that it be sold to the husband of the nursing home’s director of social services. It was, on April 19, 2016, for $10,000. However, the house’ fair market value was $82,769, and that was clearly noted in the property assessment that was in the resident’s financial file. Indeed, it was resold in April 2017 for $95,000. Naturally, these circumstances led directly to the Illinois Department of Public Health’s report.
Source: Dispatch • Argus, “St. Anthony’s fined for financial abuse of resident,” Sarah Hayden, Nov. 07, 2017