Elder Care

State officials have fined two nursing homes in Orange County for providing care so inadequate that it led to the deaths of two patients. In one case, a woman died from dehydration. In the other, staff failed to provide CPR to a man suffering a heart attack because they mistakenly believed he was under orders not to be resuscitated.

Advocates for low-wage caregivers called on authorities Monday to investigate the spending practices of a Los Angeles union and a related charity that have paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to firms owned by the wife and mother-in-law of the labor organization's leader. "This is very serious," County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, whose 1990s legislation allowed the union to organize home-care workers here, said of the financial transactions disclosed by The Times.

About 22% of the nation's nearly 16,000 nursing homes received the federal government's lowest rating in a new five-star system unveiled Thursday, while 12% received the highest ranking possible. A home could obtain up to five stars based on criteria such as staffing and how well it fared in state inspections. The lowest ranking possible was one star. Such a simple rating for so complex a task as caring for the elderly has led to much anxiety in the nursing home industry.

A court-appointed conservator suspected of stealing more than $900,000 from the estate of a 92-year-old woman to feed her gambling addiction pleaded not guilty to embezzlement charges Tuesday. Jennifer Ann Wenger, 53, of San Juan Capistrano showed no emotion during the brief hearing at Central Justice Center in Santa Ana. She remains in custody on $1-million bail. Wenger was arrested Dec.

Thirteen nursing homes in Southern California operated by one of the largest elder care providers in the nation were accused this week of elder abuse and fraud in a class-action lawsuit filed in Orange County Superior Court. The complaint filed Thursday alleges that the skilled-nursing and long-term care centers run by Life Care Centers of America Inc., based in Tennessee, have a long history of substandard care and violations of patients' rights.

Carmen Munoz ticks off the basic facts of her life in a quiet, neutral voice that belies the horrors she has known: Married at 12 to a man 10 years her senior. First-time mother at 14. Worked as a housecleaner while her husband spent his days idling, confiscating the few pesos she'd earned and burning her with cigarettes to keep her in line. "What he liked was money and beating me up," she says of her former spouse. "He enjoyed making me bleed."

A task force set up by California's chief justice to consider statewide conservatorship reform is seeking public comments on a list of draft recommendations that include a "Bill of Rights" for people under conservatorship and improved ways to protect the assets of incapacitated adults from theft.

IN America-the-gray, you don't necessarily need a condo in Boca Raton, Fla., or a senior-living community in the California desert to inaugurate your golden years. You could be sitting in your retirement nest right now. At one time, folks typically moved to new cities during their white-hair years, but today's homeowners are squeezing more time out of the family homes where they raised their children. Adapting homes to aging or less able bodies has gone mainstream.

"You don't call. You never write. You won't eat my dumplings anymore!" Chinese mothers will not have to utter those words again if the powers that be have their way. In Shanghai, the Nanjing East Road Neighborhood Committee recently took to public shaming to ensure that people attend to their aging parents. Anyone who doesn't visit at least once every three months faces having his or her name posted on a community signboard.

Three days before she died, 97-year-old Carmel Bosco changed her will to leave the lion's share of her $450,000 estate to a Riverside couple, old friends who had tended her bedsores and administered her morphine in her last weeks. Bosco's family sued, and on Monday the California Supreme Court ruled that caregivers cannot benefit from changes in wills made by dependent elderly people in their final days -- even if they are longtime personal friends of the deceased.