Giant jury verdict shakes up nursing home industry, spotlights staffing levels
By Paul Elias, APSaturday, August 28, 2010
Huge verdict shakes up nursing home industry
SAN FRANCISCO — During Cindy Cool’s almost daily visits to the nursing home, she would routinely find her Alzheimer’s-suffering father wearing urine-soaked clothes.
The Blue Lake, Calif. resident said it would take upwards of 20 minutes for the apparently short-handed staff of Eureka Healthcare and Rehabilitation to respond and help Cool clean her father. Other patients fared worse, she said.
“A lot of times I walked out of there crying because of the things I saw,” Cool said an interview.
She provided key testimony before a Humboldt County jury last month slammed the owners of her father’s nursing home with a $677 million verdict — believed to be the largest in the nation this year — sending shock waves through the industry and rekindling calls for tort reform.
