Hospital Ventilator Quinn Dombrowski https://www.flickr.com/photos/quinnanya/

ADMINISTRATOR TAKES PLEA IN NURSING HOME DEATH

RIVERHEAD – A former top administrator at a Medford nursing home admitted Friday to covering up the death of a woman at the facility.

In 2012, 72-year-old Aurelia Rios died after prosecutors say workers at Medford Multicare Center ignored several alarms, and failed to hook the woman up to a ventilator.

David Fielding admitted that he withheld the alarm log from two separate investigations into Rios’ death. He pleaded guilty to two felony counts of falsifying business records and one count of violating public health laws.

Click here to go to the News 12 Long Island story.

Newspapers photo by Jon S https://www.flickr.com/photos/62693815@N03/

How N.Y.’s Biggest For-Profit Nursing Home Group Flourishes Despite a Record of Patient Harm

OCTOBER 2015

Charlie Stewart was looking forward to getting out of the nursing home in time for his 60th birthday. On his planned release day, in late 2012, the Long Island facility instead called Stewart’s wife to say he was being sent to the hospital with a fever.

When his wife, Jeanne, met him there, the stench of rotting flesh made it difficult to sit near her husband. The small wounds on his right foot that had been healing when Stewart entered the nursing home now blackened his entire shin.

“When I saw it at the hospital … I almost threw up,” Jeanne Stewart said. “It was disgusting. I said, ‘It looks like somebody took a match to it.’ ”

Doctors told Stewart the infection in his leg was poisoning his body. To save his life, they would have to amputate above the knee.

Click here to read the whole story.