Elder Law

Illinois Nursing Home Violation: Virgil Calvert Nursing & Rehabilitation Center

By Levin & Perconti

The Virgil Calvert Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, a care facility in East St. Louis, recently received several a Type ?A? Violations from the Illinois Department of Public Health and fined $40,000. The violations resulted in part from failure to provide proper oversight and not protecting several residents from sexual abuse leading to exposure to sexually transmitted diseases.

The facility admitted one resident who suffers from mild dementia and Alzheimer?s disease. He is partially mentally impaired mentally and was a registered sex offender. The first incident involved the aggressive resident being found with a confused female resident to who claimed not to understand what had just happened.

In other cases, the resident was accused of inappropriately touching several female residents who did not possess the mental capacity to consent to that type of physical contact. Following several of the violations the nursing home employees did not create any sort of nursing or incident report or notify the state regulatory department about the conduct.

Earlier this year several another incident was reported involving the resident making unwanted sexual advances on a female resident. A nurse spotted two shoes underneath a curtain and found the sexually aggressive resident acting inappropriately with a female resident with severe mental impairment. The female victim appeared unsure about what was going on?a clear pattern of behavior had emerged where the aggressive resident took advantage of the most impaired female residents.

A different male resident at the facility was also found to have committed several inappropriate actions with unwilling female residents. However, even though employees at the facility admitted the problematic sexual actions of the resident, no unique care plan was created, no minimum data set was completed, and no other nurse?s notes were made to monitor the problem.

Our Chicago nursing home lawyers at Levin & Perconti have experience fighting for victims of negligent nursing home care. It is imperative that these facilities protect residents from one another?especially when there is repeated evidence that certain residents pose particular risks. Be sure to contact them or any similar attorney if you know of violations similar to the one at Virgil Calvert Nursing and Rehabilitation Center.

The Illinois Department of Health produces quarterly reports on nursing home violators. To access the IDPH report on this violation, please click the link.

Full post as published by Illinois Nursing Home Abuse Blog on October 20, 2010 (boomark / email).