Health News
Nursing home chain says it will lease its Kentucky facilities because legislature didn't pass bill to filter lawsuits
A major nursing-home chain says it will lease all of its Kentucky properties to a Texas company because a bill to insulate nursing homes from lawsuits did not pass the General Assembly this year,
Extendicare Health Services owns Pembroke Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, Shady Lawn Nursing Home in Cadiz and 19 other facilities in Kentucky, reports Nick Tabor of the Kentucky New Era in Hopkinsville. The company has been riddled with problems. A 2009 study ranked three of its Kentucky facilities among the country's worst nursing homes.
"The combination of a worsening litigation environment and the lack of any likelihood of tort reform in the state of Kentucky has made this the prudent decision for our company and its unitholders," said Tim Lukenda, president and CEO of Extendicare.
In this year's legislative session, nursing homes lobbied for a law that would have created medical review panels to evaluate potential lawsuits against nursing homes, personal-care homes and some facilities for the intellectually and developmentally disabled. The goal of the panel was to help eliminate frivolous lawsuits against the long-term care industry.
The Pembroke facility has been sued 20 times in Christian Circuit Court since 2002, and seven of the suits are still pending, Tabor reports. The others were dismissed, most with confidential settlements. (Read more)
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531 Deficiencies Found In 80 Kentucky Nursing Homes In First Quarter Of 2012; Worst One Had 29; Five Had None
State inspectors found 531 deficiencies in 80 Kentucky nursing homes in the first quarter of this year, with one facility accounting for 29 of them alone: Life Care Center of Morehead. In five nursing homes, no deficiencies were found. The information...
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Effort To Boost Oral Health In Nursing Homes Gets Tangled Up With Industry's Attempt To Insulate Itself From Lawsuits; Both Bills Die
A bill to get nursing-home residents better dental services "appears to be dead after the Senate added language from another bill designed to shield the nursing-home industry from litigation," Deborah Yetter reports for The Courier-Journal. House Bill...
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Nursing Homes Want Panel To Review Lawsuits Against Them
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Inspectors Found 389 Deficiencies In 66 Kentucky Nursing Homes In Last Quarter Of 2010
Inspectors found 389 deficiencies at 66 Kentucky nursing homes in the last three months of 2010. Ten of the nursing homes inspected had 10 or more deficiencies. Two of them, one in Elizabethtown and one in Winchester, had none. Kentuckians for Nursing...
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18 Percent Of Kentucky Nursing Homes Had 10 Or More Deficiencies In July-sept.; 42 Exceeded State Average Of Six
State inspectors found 20 of Kentucky's nursing homes, 18 percent of the total, had 10 or more deficiencies during the third quarter of 2010. Kentucky nursing homes have an average of six deficiencies, according to Medicare's nursing-home...
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