John Dalli (right) and Joe Carola (center) organized a New York City versus Long Island bar association hockey match with Hon. Alan Scheinkman (left) that raised money for the Fisher House Foundation. Eagle photo by Rob Abruzzese
Presiding Justice of the Appellate Division, Second Department skates too
After the New York Islanders clinched a playoff spot by beating the Sabres at the Nassau Coliseum on Saturday, lawyers from New York City and Long Island faced off against each other and raised more than $10,000 in a charity hockey match. Brooklyn attorney John Dalli, a member of the Columbian Lawyers Association and Catholic Lawyers Guild, helped to organize the event that was the idea of Queens attorney Joe Carola. Hon. Alan Scheinkman, presiding justice of the Appellate Division, Second Department, skated for the New York City team.
Hon. Angela Iannacci and Hon. Anthony Cannataro. Eagle photo by Rob Abruzzese
“Joe Carola called me and told me that he was looking to put a charity hockey game together,” Dalli said. “The Coliseum agreed to let us have it here after an Islanders game if we sold a certain amount of tickets. We decided to make it New York City bar attorneys versus Long Island bar attorneys and we got a tremendous response. We ended up having a waiting list of players.” Dalli and Carola managed to sell 250 tickets. The Islanders donated a portion of the price of each ticket to the Fisher House Foundation, and Dalli and Carola also raised donations from players. Lexitas, formerly Deitz and Barrister Court Reporting, donated money and jerseys for the players to wear. In total, Dalli said, approximately $10,000 was raised.
From left: Brian Stoddard, Jim Baydar, Hon. Angela Iannacci and Annamarie Bondi-Stoddard. Eagle photo by Rob Abruzzese
Mark Horowitz, from Lexitas, Hon. Anthony Cannataro and John Dalli. Eagle photo by Rob Abruzzese
The Long Island team managed to beat the New York City team, but Dalli explained that he was so encouraged by the money raised and the response from the players that he wants to host the event again next year. He said he was thrilled to get such a strong response and was especially happy to have Justice Scheinkman on the ice with him. “When Justice Angela Iannacci called me and suggested I invite Justice Scheinkman, I thought she meant get him a ticket to the [Islanders] game,” Dalli said. “When she told me he played, I called him right away and he didn’t hesitate to accept.
Players wait for the zamboni to finish cleaning the ice before they start skating. Eagle photo by Rob Abruzzese
Mark Horowitz dropped the puck before the game. Eagle photo by Rob Abruzzese
“Justice Scheinkman and I did have a fight over the No. 7,” Dalli admitted. “We both idolize Rod Gilbert, but he lost that fight. Since I organized it, I was able to give myself the number.” Justice Scheinkman grew up playing pond hockey and club hockey in New Rochelle. He explained that playing hockey has become an important part of his routine since he’s become presiding justice.
Not something you see the average Appellate Division presiding justice doing. Eagle photo by Rob Abruzzese
“For a couple of years, I was on two teams and played pickup on Saturdays,” said Scheinkman, who has a partial-season ticket package to watch the Rangers. “When I ran for judge in 2006, I stopped for a while because campaigning took up so much of my time. “When I got the job as presiding judge, I started putting on weight, and I put on more weight than I should have,” Scheinkman said. “I had suits that I couldn’t even wear. When I realized that, I really made a concerted effort to lose weight. Now I try to play once a week. I don’t know how much longer I can do it, but I love the sport. I enjoy the camaraderie with the other players. I love just being out on the ice and I love going to games.” The judge’s strategy for keeping up with the attorneys? “Stay alive,” he joked.
John Dalli handling the puck. Eagle photo by Rob Abruzzese
Justice Alan Scheinkman likes to clog the front of the net. Eagle photo by Rob Abruzzese
The hockey match was organized by Dalli and Carola, but Dalli explained that Lisa M. Baldi was instrumental in putting everything together and called her the backbone of the event for coordinating everything with the Islanders and the charity. The Fisher House Foundation is a charity that provides housing to members of the military and veterans and their families while they are receiving treatment at VA hospitals.PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ARTICLE ON THE BROOKLYN DAILY EAGLE WEBSITE
Article and all contents © 2019, Brooklyn Daily Eagle / Everything Brooklyn Media. All Rights Reserved.
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All of us at Dalli & Marino, LLP frequently participate in public service, and in philanthropic and charitable activities, in the New York Metro Area (Brooklyn, Manhattan, Long Island, The Bronx, Queens, Staten Island, and Westchester and Rockland Counties). Learn more about our practice by visiting the About Us section of our website, and please contact us at 1-888-465-8790 [Toll-Free], or by completing the form on our Contact Page, to find out about our public service initiatives.
On March 14, New England Public Radio reposted an important broadcast (and article) from WBUR, with the online article, by Quincy Walters, entitled “Patient Deaths Cited In Mass. Settlement With 7 Nursing Homes.“ The broadcast and article described a woman named Betty Crane, whom, in 2015, according to the reporting, was “looking forward to her 70th wedding anniversary in December…”, but, “at a press conference at the Massachusetts attorney general’s office Wednesday, Crane’s daughter, Candi Hitchcock, said her mother didn’t make it past August.” Walters’ reporting continued, stating that a “caretaker at the Beaumont Rehabilitation and Skilled Nursing Center in Westborough didn’t turn on the alarm on Crane’s bed.”
The story revealed that, according to Hitchcock, Crane “got up and walked, and she was not found until the shift changed. She had a head injury,” and that, “We were not notified. The nurse on duty was not notified. There was no wound care at all.” It continued: “A week later, Hitchcock said her 89-year-old mother died. She said her mother’s death was a violation of an inherent trust.” This came to the attention of Massachusetts Attorney General, Maura Healey. According to the article, “after the death of Hitchcock’s mom and other similar deaths and injuries at other nursing homes, the AG’s office launched an investigation into allegations of systemic failures at elder care facilities across the state.”
In the broadcast, New England Public Radio and WBUR described a pattern, resulting in multiple cases: “After a years-long investigation, Healey’s office reached settlements with seven nursing home facilities over the deaths of five residents and several injury cases.”
READ THE COMPLETE ARTICLE AND HEAR THE BROADCAST BY CLICKING ON THIS LINK
[Article and broadcast, Copyright © 2019 New England Public Radio. All rights reserved.]
Contact Dalli & Marino LLP
Dalli & Marino, LLP has been providing top-tier representation, and we have recovered millions of dollars, for families in cases of nursing home and other skilled care/elder care facility neglect and abuse in New York City, Suffolk and Nassau Counties, (Long Island), Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens, Staten Island, and Westchester County, since 1995.
Please contact our team to discuss your case, or with any questions, at 1-888-465-8790 [Toll-Free], or by completing the CASE EVALUATION Form on our Contact Page.
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Nursing Home Update: Latest Data Indicate Low Staffing is Persistent & Pervasive
February 27, 2019 – Staffing is perhaps the most important factor in a nursing home resident’s quality of care and ability to live with dignity. Unfortunately, inadequate nursing home staffing is a widespread and persistent problem. Some nursing homes provide good care, ensuring that their facilities have enough qualified care staff. However, in the absence of limits on profits or administrative expenses, too many nursing homes fail to allocate the resources necessary to maintain sufficient staffing.
Today, LTCCC announces the publication of the latest, user-friendly data on the staff assigned to provide resident care and select non-nursing staff, including those providing important activities and social work services. This information can help the public, news media, and policymakers identify and assess the extent to which nursing homes in their communities are providing sufficient staffing to meet basic clinical and quality of life needs. The data are for the third quarter of 2018, the most recent period reported by the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).
Visitors to our website, www.nursinghome411.org, can download easy-to-use charts for every state that include (for each facility in the state in compliance with the reporting requirement):
- The facility’s resident census (population);
- Its direct care RN, LPN, and CNA staffing levels;
- The amount of care staff hours per resident per day for both all care staff and for RNs specifically;
- Select non-nursing staff hours per day, including administrators, social workers, and activities staff.
To facilitate ease of use, the individual state files are easily sortable. For example, a state file can be sorted to identify which facilities have the highest reported levels of RN care and which have the lowest.
The website also has a range of free resources for residents, families, and those who work with them, including fact sheets, forms & tools, and the Dementia Care Advocacy Toolkit.
A few facts about the reported data:
- US nursing homes provide an average of 3.5 total care staff hours per resident per day. A 2001 landmark federal study indicated that at least 4.1 hours is needed to meet a typical resident’s needs.
- US nursing homes provide an average of .5 RN care staff hours per resident per day. The 2001 federal study indicated that 10 – 50% more is needed to meet a typical resident’s clinical needs.
- US nursing homes provide an average of .2 hours activities staff time and .1 hours of social work staff time per resident per day. LTCCC believes that lower activities staff time may contribute to social isolation and impact a resident’s psychosocial well-being.
Please visit https://nursinghome411.org/join/ to sign-up for alerts & updates.
Long Term Care Community Coalition
www.nursinghome411.org
One Penn Plaza, Suite 6252
New York, NY 10119
United States
According to Holter, “Julia Wiggins, a local pastor, posted the photos to Facebook on Tuesday showing 80-year-old Esther Brown ‘face down into a soft pillow gasping for breath and strangling on her own saliva,’ she wrote.”
The article goes on to state that, “Wiggins urged people with family members in nursing homes to keep tabs on them often.” As she indicated, “’People please keep a close check on any of your loved ones if they are in these places, she wrote.”
READ THE COMPLETE ARTICLE BY CLICKING ON THIS LINK
Contact Dalli & Marino LLP
Dalli & Marino, LLP has been providing top-tier representation, and we have recovered millions of dollars, for those who have experienced mistreatment and neglect in nursing, elder care and other care facilities, in New York City, Suffolk and Nassau Counties, (Long Island), Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens, Staten Island, and Westchester County, since 1995.
Please contact our team to discuss your case, or with any questions, at 1-888-465-8790 [Toll-Free], or by completing the CASE EVALUATION Form on our Contact Page.
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A January 11, 2019, article in The Cut, by authors, Kimberly Truong and Claire Lampen, was entitled, “Woman in Vegetative State Gives Birth, Prompting Sexual-Assault Investigation”. The article delineates that, “On December 29 (2018), a woman who had been in a vegetative state for over two decades gave birth in an Arizona nursing facility, prompting authorities to investigate what looks like a case of sexual assault.” According to Truong and Lampen, following the “resignation,” just a few days later, of the “CEO of the corporation that runs the nursing home, they learned that, though “it was previously reported that the woman had been a patient at Hacienda HealthCare for about 14 years, new records obtained by People found that she had been at the facility since she was between the ages of 2 and 3. The records also indicated that she has quadriplegia and a seizure disorder, along with recurrent pneumonia.”
Article and image copyright © 2019, New York Media LLC. All rights reserved.
Outraged family members spoke to Fox10, and, later, as described in the article, an anonymous source for another news outlet, KKPHO-TV, told the reporters that they, “know that at some point last spring or summer, someone sexually assaulted a woman who was in a persistent vegetative state, and she became pregnant.” Truong and Lampen continued: “Authorities have reportedly remained tight-lipped about the case, but given the circumstances, sexual abuse would seem to be the most logical conclusion.”
READ THE COMPLETE ARTICLE IN THE CUT (VIA YAHOO NEWS) BY CLICKING ON THIS LINK
Contact Dalli & Marino LLP
Dalli & Marino, LLP has been providing top-tier representation, and we have recovered millions of dollars, for those who have experienced mistreatment and neglect in nursing, elder care and other care facilities, in New York City, Suffolk and Nassau Counties, (Long Island), Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens, Staten Island, and Westchester County, since 1995.
Please contact our team to discuss your case, or with any questions, at 1-888-465-8790 [Toll-Free], or by completing the CASE EVALUATION Form on our Contact Page.
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A shocking story appeared on and in several New York news outlets in 2017, one sourced here from the News4NY (NBC) website, entitled, “Nurse Attacks 83-Year-Old Paraplegic War Veteran After He Outs Her for Being Late to Work: Cops”. The story described how, “A licensed practical nurse allegedly brutally attacked an 83-year-old paraplegic Korean War veteran as he lay helpless in a stretcher once she learned he had notified her employer that she showed up late for work.”
Areatha Pickens
According to police quoted in the 2017 report, the situation occurred when the nurse, Areatha Pickens, allegedly, “became outraged after the elderly man told her employer she was late and punched him repeatedly, fracturing an orbital bone. The man, who became paraplegic in a 1975 car accident, was treated at a hospital.”
READ THE COMPLETE STORY ON THE NEWS4NY WEBSITE
Contact Dalli & Marino LLP
Dalli & Marino, LLP has been providing top-tier representation, and we have recovered millions of dollars, for those who have experienced elder abuse, or issues of neglect or mistreatment by providers, in New York City, Suffolk and Nassau Counties, (Long Island), Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens, Staten Island, and Westchester County, since 1995.
Please contact our team to discuss your case, or with any questions, at 1-888-465-8790 [Toll-Free], or by completing the CASE EVALUATION Form on our Contact Page.
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Following is a joint statement issued by Long Term Care Community Coalition and the Center for Medicare Advocacy on current financial troubles and turmoil in the nursing home industry. The statement is also available at https://nursinghome411.org/ltccc-comments/.
Joint Statement on Turmoil in the Nursing Home Industry
January 2019—The nursing home industry is facing tremendous turmoil because some operators are undertaking risky financial deals in an attempt to squeeze out larger profits from their nursing homes, even when these deals could potentially harm residents. The recent collapse of several nursing home chains around the country also raises serious concerns about the quality of states’ licensure processes and the industry’s ability to meet the care needs of a vulnerable population.
In a recently published article, The Washington Post examined the impact that a private-equity firm had on one nursing home chain. After the Carlyle Group bought HCR ManorCare, the number of health deficiencies at the chain “each year rose 26 percent between 2013 and 2017.” During this period, the Carlyle Group sold ManorCare’s real estate empire for about $6.1 billion dollars, in an arrangement which then required to the chain to pay rent to the new owners. Unable to pay the escalating rent, the chain was forced into bankruptcy in 2018.
ManorCare’s financial troubles are not isolated. Other nursing home chains have collapsed as a result of risky financial decisions and poor management. Skyline Healthcare’s nursing homes in several states were taken over through receiverships and rapid-fire sales after poor management placed residents in danger. The Kansas City Star noted that “[a]nalysts and industry insiders say state regulators should have known Skyline was biting off more than it could chew . . . the company was struggling to pay its bills in other states even before it moved into Kansas . . . .” Skyline acquired many of its facilities from Golden Living, another nursing home chain that was sued by the Pennsylvania Attorney General in 2015. According to The Philadelphia Inquirer, the lawsuit stated that “Golden Living was guilty of deceptive advertising in Pennsylvania in that it promised decent care but did not deliver it.”
Such examples of risky financial arrangements and poor management are in addition to cases of related-party transactions which can siphon money away from resident care. The New York Times explained that “owners of nursing homes outsource a wide variety of goods and services to companies in which they have a financial interest or that they control.” The article added that nearly three-quarters of nursing homes in the U.S. employ such practices and that these nursing homes tend to “have fewer nurses and aides per patient, they have higher rates of patient injuries and unsafe practices, and they are the subject of complaints almost twice as often as independent homes.”
Nursing home residents need to be protected from bad actors who place their lives in danger. States must develop, implement, and enforce better policies and procedures for reviewing operating licenses to make sure existing operators with a history of providing poor care cannot expand their operations and that new operators are thoroughly vetted. Additionally, medical loss ratios should be implemented across the industry to limit profits and administrative costs. Without proper oversight and accountability, resident care will continue to take a backseat to “profits.”
For additional information and resources, please visit
www.nursinghome411.org and www.medicareadvocacy.org.
Long Term Care Community Coalition
www.nursinghome411.org
One Penn Plaza, Suite 6252
New York, NY 10119
United States
We monitor regional and national news for stories of nursing home and elder abuse. These stories supplement the case studies, scenarios and vignettes that we have produced here,
based upon actual cases and situations encountered since 1995 when we began our practice.
Dalli & Marino LLP
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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.
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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.
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