Albuquerque New Mexico Nursing Home Abuse Law Blog

It is not uncommon to hear about heat-related deaths of elderly adults when temperatures soar in New Mexico. The heat is hard on anybody, but elderly individuals have an increased risk due to a few different factors. UC Davis explains that older adults often have health conditions, such as diabetes or heart problems, that can lead to issues with circulation and affect heat dissipation within the body. These medical conditions can affect how heat affects their bodies or make them unable to tell when they are overheated.

Another related issue is certain medications they may take. Some medications can cause dehydration. Extreme heat dehydrates the body, so mix that with medication and dehydration is a serious risk. If an elderly person becomes dehydrated, it can lead to serious health complications, including death.

If you have an elderly grandfather living in a nearby nursing home in New Mexico, you probably would not expect to find a picture of your grandfather online, and you certainly would not want to discover a picture of your loved one being humiliated by the staff of the nursing home. Yet in recent years, some people have found images of their senior loved ones being photographed in embarrassing situations by nursing home employees. It is a problem that is increasingly being covered in national news, and people should be aware of it.

The Washington Post reported in 2015 that staff members of nursing homes across the United States have been photographing senior residents in dehumanizing and embarrassing positions. In some of these instances, workers will take pictures of seniors while partially undressed or on the toilet. In other cases, workers may coach an elderly person to do something humiliating, like use profane language or say something obscene, and capture it on video. Since many of these seniors are mentally impaired, they often do not realize what they are doing.

In recent years, news stories across the country have described tragic instances of senior living facilities catching fire. The consequences of these fires have included the displacement of senior residents, the hospitalization of some seniors, and even deaths of senior home residents. Because many New Mexico seniors have reduced physical mobility, they cannot escape from a burning building easily, with some requiring assistance to even move at all. Experts have identified several causes of fires that are common to senior living communities.

Senior Housing News describes a lack of a sprinkler system as a major reason for fires to break out in senior living facilities. With a sprinkler system, a facility has a chance to put out small fires before they spread. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has mandated that all long-term care facilities should have sprinkler systems installed by the year 2013, but there is a chance older buildings may still not have systems in place due to the length of time it takes to retrofit a sprinkler in existing structures.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Inspector General's office recently issued a report finding that, while patients can generally rely on hospice care to alleviate their suffering, too many hospice providers are neglecting patients and defrauding Medicare. The report compared patient records with Medicare payment data going back as far as 2005.

Hospice services, which focus on providing pain relief and emotional support to patients in the final stages of a terminal illness, are a popular Medicare benefit. As NPR notes, Medicare paid some $16.7 billion in hospice benefits in 2016 -- up almost 182 percent from a decade ago.