Philadelphia Personal Injury Attorney Blog | Pomerantz Perlberger & Lewis LLP

A nursing home is supposed to be a safe place, where residents are cared for and given a high level of preventive care and treatment for their conditions. The US Department of Health and Human Services inspects each nursing home to make sure that residents have the care and supervision they need to stay healthy and avoid dangerous accidents or acute medical conditions. However, these inspections are often toothless, and ineffective in protecting the elderly and infirm who rely on nursing homes for their lives.

Consider, for example, the case of a northern New York nursing home, Eden Park, in Glens Falls. An inspection showed that the facility was not equipped and maintained to safely care for its residents. However, it continued to operate with conditions that subsequent inspections showed had, if anything, grown worse. With only six aides to staff a floor of 40 residents, many of the residents were neglected for hours, their complaints dismissed. Patients with bronchitis sit alone in rooms huddled under blankets, shivering, the thermostat set to 69 degrees while the cold winter wind blows outside.

Now it turns out that the supposed operator of the nursing home was never a legal entity licensed by the state. How is a company allowed to operate a health care facility without being a legal entity? If it is not a legal entity, what is it? Why would anyone try to operate a nursing home under such a title?

The answer is that the supposed corporation is a sham and a shadow-box, designed to deflect liability of the parent company to whom the profits are being channeled. The parent company for this particular nursing home, under the vague name National Health Care Associates, Inc, has been revealed to own 17 nursing homes across the states of New York and Connecticut.

However, this company is not alone. Companies of this type operate in every state in the union, even Pennsylvania. With the inefficiency of state and federal agencies that are supposed to be checking up on these facilities, the only way to protect our elderly against nursing home abuse and neglect is by maintaining a culture of vigilance, selecting a nursing home carefully, and punishing those who endanger people for profit.

If you know someone who has suffered as a result of abuse or neglect at a nursing care facility, contact the lawyers at Pomerantz, Perlberger, and Lewis, LLP, today for a free initial consultation.