Oct 7 2014
More than 50,000 people are living in nursing homes without adequate fire sprinkler systems, a year after the deadline set by the federal government, according to The Associated Press. Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal looks at lawyers who specialize in suing for-profit nursing homes for abuse and neglect.
The Associated Press: Despite Rules, Nursing Homes Still Lack Sprinklers
Tens of thousands of the country's most vulnerable people are living in nursing homes without adequate sprinklers or that are missing them altogether, according to government data. Despite a history of deadly nursing home fires and a five-year lead-up to an August 2013 deadline to install sprinklers, 385 facilities in 39 states fail to meet requirements set by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the federal agency whose duties include regulating nursing homes. Together, those facilities are licensed to house more than 52,000 people, according to data from the agency known as CMS (Sedensky, 10/3).
The Wall Street Journal: Lawsuits Rattle Nursing-Home Chains
Arkansas lawyer Brian Reddick has found a lucrative niche as America ages: suing big nursing-home chains. Mr. Reddick and other alumni of a Florida law firm that pioneered the approach have taken those tactics on the road. They are filing neglect and abuse cases in places like Pennsylvania, where the country's fourth-largest concentration of residents aged 85 and older has spurred a litigation boom aimed largely at for-profit nursing-home operators (Smith, 10/3).
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 This article was reprinted from kaiserhealthnews.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
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Concerns grow over quality of care as investor groups buy not-for-profit nursing homes