Elder Law

Nursing Home Business Sacrifices Care For Profits

By Levin & Perconti

The Florida Times-Union profiled a nursing home entrepreneur who has continuously skirted the law, tolerating nursing home abuse in an effort to maximize personal profits. Robert Hagan owns sixteen nursing homes in several states, a business which has provided him with an upper class living?he owns three million-dollar-plus homes. Mr. Hagan has built his nursing home business fortune by agreeing to take ?difficult? residents, including Alzheimer?s patients, the psychotically ill, and criminal offenders.

Mr. Kagan was quick to accept the tens of millions of dollars in federal money to care for these difficult patients. But he was less eager to accept the responsibility of ensuring that the facilities that housed the residents were safe and secure. One of his nursing homes in particular, Glenwood Nursing Center, has shown itself to be a bastion of abuse and neglect. For example, one resident, Virginia Thurston, was raped at Glenwood in 2002 by another resident. Nursing home staff members failed to prevent the attack, even though they were well aware of the potential for assault.

Ms. Thurston?s daughter filed suit against the nursing home for their negligence in allowing the attack. After hearing the case, a jury demanded Glenwood pay the Thurston family $750,000 for their mistakes.

The family has not yet received a dime.

Mr. Hagan has used procedural and business maneuvers to avoid paying the judgment against his facility. He attempted to ?sell? the facility to a new business to thwart the collection of the judgment. Officials only recently discovered that Hagan was the owner of the new company which supposedly bought the nursing home. Ownership did not actually change hands.

This attempt to wiggle out of his responsibilities and ignore nursing home laws seems to be a trend for Hagan. In fact, Florida state officials have attempted to revoke Glenwood?s nursing license to force the closure of the facility after repeated examples of residents becoming physically aggressive with one another. Yet after a stay was granted, the nursing facility is still operating indefinitely while they drag out the appeals process.

The extreme lengths to which nursing home administrators are willing to go to avoid paying for their mistakes is exactly why it is important to contact nursing home abuse attorneys like ours at Levin & Perconti. Even obvious examples of nursing home abuse are often difficult to translate into legal judgments. After a verdict is reached, it then takes even more legal maneuvering to actually collect the money. Please do not allow yourself to be taken advantage of by profit-driven nursing home administrators. If you or a loved one has been neglected at a nursing home contact our lawyers today.

Full post as published by Illinois Nursing Home Abuse Blog on August 16, 2010 (boomark / email).