Kentucky Nursing Home Abuse Evidence Shot Using Family’s Hidden Camera
Video footage shot at a Richmond, Kentucky nursing home shows workers abusing and neglecting an 84-year-old resident. The video was recorded on a camera hidden in the bedroom of Armeda Thomas, an Alzheimer’s resident at Madison Manor.
Family members had placed the camera in the elderly woman’s room after they noticed that she had multiple “handprint” bruises all over her body and nursing home staffers couldn’t properly explain what happened. In fact, the workers claimed the bruises occurred because Thomas was “combative.”
The footage shows nursing home staffers taunting and physically abusing Thomas, as well as neglecting to clean and feed her. The nursing home abuse and neglect incidents were shot on videotape between August 17 and September 8, 2008.
On video, nursing home staffers are seen manhandling and harassing Thomas, including pulling her out of bed by her neck and wrists. X-rays taken of Thomas in September showed that she had fractures in her lumbar vertebrae.
Documents were also reportedly falsified to show that the 84-year-old had been fed. In two instances, it was the nursing home assistant who ate Thomas’s food. The elderly resident reportedly lost 19 pounds in two weeks.
Now, the Kentucky Attorney General’s Office is considering filing criminal charges against the Richmond home for nursing home abuse and neglect. Since the criminal probe began, evidence has surfaced indicating that at least 17 other nursing home residents with cognitive impairments had sustained “injuries of unknown origin” and that Madison Manor failed to properly investigate the causes of their injuries.
Madison Manor has been issued a Type-A citation, which is the most serious citation that the inspector general's office of the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services can give a nursing home. Although the issues for which the citation was given were reportedly corrected last month, some deficiencies still exist.
Thomas, who was removed from the home immediately after the abuse was discovered, died from Alzheimer’s-related complications on November 7.
Videotape at nursing home records abuse, Kentucky.com, November 30, 2008
Related Web Resources:
Kentucky Nursing Home Abuse Attorney Steve Frederick has helped many nursing home residents recover compensation for their abuse and neglect injuries. Contact 1-(866)-KYTRIAL today.
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