Our firm has been suing nursing homes since the 1990s. In fact, Suthers & Harper was one of the first firms in the United States to obtain a successful jury verdict against a nursing home for neglecting and abusing a resident. When we first started accepting these cases in the…
Life Care Centers of America (“LCCA”), and its owner Forrest Preston, have agreed to pay $145 million to settle a government lawsuit alleging that LCCA violated the False Claims Act by knowingly causing their nursing homes to submit false claims for rehabilitation therapy services that were not reasonable or necessary.…
Recently, we reported on the new rule issued by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) that bars nursing homes from requiring residents to sign arbitration agreements as a condition of their admission to the nursing home. These forced arbitration agreements prevented nursing home residents and their family members…
As we have written on this blog numerous time over the years, many nursing homes and other long-term care facilities use forced arbitration contracts to prevent their residents from bringing a legal action against the facilities in a court of law, and are instead forced into expensive, secretive arbitration proceedings. …
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released its latest quality ratings of nursing homes in the United States. One out of every four Georgia nursing homes received the lowest rating, one star. A one star rating means that the nursing home is “much below average.” Four Savannah-area nursing…
After an alarming report by the website ProPublica, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has announced plans to crack down on nursing home employees who take demeaning photographs and videos of residents and post them on social media websites. The report documented 44 known incidents across the country since…
As part of an ongoing campaign by trial lawyers across America to end the abusive use of forced arbitration, the American Association for Justice (AAJ) has released a new report outlining how arbitration clauses stack the deck against American citizens. The report entitled “FORCED ARBITRATION: HOW CORPORATIONS USE THE FINE…
Federal and state laws require that nursing homes maintain or attain the highest practicable mental, physical, and psychosocial well-being for their patients. These laws provide that nursing homes must ensure that their patients’ nutrition and hydration needs are met, as proper nutrition and hydration are two critical components for nursing…
A great injustice is taking place in this country: the use of pre-dispute binding arbitration clauses in nursing home admissions contracts by the nursing home industry. These clauses provide that victims of abuse and neglect in nursing homes give up their right to a jury trial. This directly undermines the…
Almost one-third of the nursing homes in the United States will be getting lower scores on the Government’s Quality Scale as a result of tougher standards being utilized for rating purposes. The Government’s Nursing Home Compare website is a five-star quality ratings program used by more than one million consumers…