Relatives of a 78-year old staying at the QuadRangle Retirement Community in Haverton, Pennsylvania recently filed suit against the nursing home for nursing home abuse.

The 78-year old Alzheimer’s patient’s family said they suspected that the patient was the victim of verbal and physical abuse at the home.  After the patient’s complaints to officials at the home went ignored, relatives installed a hidden video camera in a clock in the patient’s bedroom.

Officials at the home told the patient and her family members that the alleged mistreatment was false and was the result of the patient’s dementia.  However, according to the lawsuit, the family was able to record both physical and verbal abuse by nursing home staff on the hidden camera.

If you or a loved one has been subjected to abuse or neglect while staying in a nursing home, contact the Philadelphia nursing home abuse lawyers of Lowenthal & Abrams, P.C. at 215-238-1130 to speak with one of our attorneys today.

Last month, a Pennsylvania woman was awarded $23.1 million in a nursing home negligence case filed against an at-home care nurse and her employer in Lehigh County.

According to the lawsuit, the 55-year old Crohn’s disease patient was cared for at her home by a nurse employed by St. Luke’s Miners Memorial Home Care.  The jury found that the nurse was negligent in failing to evaluate the patient’s feeding catheter and to report a bacteria infection in the feeding tube.

As a result, the woman developed a nearly fatal blood infection.  The infection became gangrenous and septic and the woman had to have a finger and both of her legs amputated.

A Kentucky nursing home worker is suspected of giving a patient at the nursing home the wrong food and then leaving them alone, choking for 15 to 20 minutes.  The Kentucky Attorney General’s Office is investigating the possible nursing home abuse at The Johnson Mathers Nursing Home in Carlisle, Kentucky.

In April 2010, the nursing home resident began living at The Johnson Mathers Nursing Home.  The patient needed a pureed diet and requested in their forms that all necessary measures be taken to save their life in the case of an emergency.  About 10 days after their arrival, the resident was given the wrong meal.

One nurse at the home said they heard the resident choking from the hallway and went into their room to check.  After discovering the patient was in fact choking, the nurse took 15 to 20 minutes to clean a suction machine used to help choking patients.

Investigators believe that the nurse should have been aware that the facility’s emergency life saving “crash” carts are equipped with clean suction machines.  The nurse used the suction machine on the patient, but it was too late.  The resident passed away that evening at a hospital emergency room.