Nursing Home

In a rebuke of the Motion Picture and Television Fund, state inspectors concluded that fund administrators violated state law when they transferred dozens of residents out of the charity's beleaguered nursing home last year. The California Department of Public Health said in a recent report that nursing-home managers did not issue 30-day discharge notices to more than 30 residents who left the nursing home informing them of their rights, including the option to appeal the decision to relocate them.

Re "He sat by while wife died: assisted suicide - or love?," Column One, May 16 Alan Purdy committed a courageous act in an impossible situation. After having once saved his wife Margaret from a suicide attempt, he accepted her wishes to stop her unending suffering and allowed her to take her own life. The courage it took for Purdy to share the end with her is difficult to understand. But what should be understood is that all the justifications for taking legal action against him are wrong.

The corporation that owns Corbin Convalescent Hospital, and its president, pleaded no contest Friday in Los Angeles Municipal Court to criminal charges stemming from the alleged mistreatment of patients at the Reseda nursing home. Thomas Konig, president of Summit Care-California, which owns Corbin, pleaded no contest to one of 39 criminal counts filed by the city attorney last summer. As part of a plea-bargain arrangement, charges against William Pierpont, Summit's chairman, were dropped.

Tornadoes tore through the Dallas-Fort Worth area known as the Metroplex on Tuesday, and although no serious injuries had been reported by mid-afternoon, officials are seeing major damage in their wake.  Lt. Darrel Whitfield of the Arlington Fire Department told The Times that a tornado struck at about 1:15 p.m. in Fort Worth and headed 15 miles east into neighboring Arlington, home of the Texas Rangers baseball team. "We have heavy damage in south Arlington, no reports of injuries, several fires, lightning strikes," Whitfield said.

Firms that supply temporary nurses to the nation's hospitals are taking perilous shortcuts in their screening and supervision, sometimes putting seriously ill patients in the hands of incompetent or impaired caregivers. Emboldened by a chronic nursing shortage and scant regulation, the firms vie for their share of a free-wheeling, $4-billion industry. Some have become havens for nurses who hopscotch from place to place to avoid the consequences of their misconduct. An investigation by the nonprofit newsroom ProPublica and the Los Angeles Times found dozens of instances in which staffing agencies skimped on background checks or ignored warnings from hospitals about sub-par nurses on their payrolls.

In the hallway, Bella and Diva are asleep once again, snoring as only contented dogs can snore, eight legs splayed in the air. One floor up, there is the smell of baking bread. In the gardens out back, a visitor and her young daughter happily explore the playground. Nothing is particularly unusual about that scene in Fairfax City, Va.--except that it's unfolding at a nursing home, a setting more typically associated with loss and dying than joy and living.

Michael Grace will never forget the day he brought his mother, Louise Grace, home from the hospital, and found she could only hold a thought for a few seconds at a time. "It is a panic situation," Grace said. "It's like waking up in the morning with both your arms cut off. What do you do? You think, 'I'll telephone for help,' then you realize you can't reach a phone. That's what it's like--there is no help at all."

Tornadoes tore through the Dallas-Fort Worth area known as the Metroplex on Tuesday, and although no serious injuries had been reported by mid-afternoon, officials are seeing major damage in their wake.  Lt. Darrel Whitfield of the Arlington Fire Department told The Times that a tornado struck at about 1:15 p.m. in Fort Worth and headed 15 miles east into neighboring Arlington, home of the Texas Rangers baseball team. "We have heavy damage in south Arlington, no reports of injuries, several fires, lightning strikes," Whitfield said.

We've all heard that government paperwork is a drag on productivity and a backdoor tax on the economy. Here's a case where it may actually be helping to improve people's lives. The paperwork at issue is a questionnaire of up to 38 pages nursing homes now have to fill out for every resident upon admission. The form has to be filled out again periodically during the resident's stay, and again upon the resident's discharge, no matter whether he or she is being sent home to live with family, or sent to a hospital by ambulance in the middle of the night.

A plan to help secure the future of Hollywood's most famous nursing home has been stalled by gridlock in Washington. After months of negotiations, the board of the Motion Picture & Television Fund is close to finalizing a deal with Kindred Healthcare Inc. of Louisville, Ky., to invest in long-term acute-care services at the Woodland Hills complex that includes the nursing home. Under the proposed agreement, Kindred would invest $10 million to remodel an existing hospital building and would lease hospital and rehabilitation beds from the fund.

The cost of long-term care is the big health insurance uncertainty for Americans 65 and older. How will they pay for long-term care? The biggest shock for people entering the Medicare system is learning that it won't pay for custodial care in a nursing home. Let's say you are 90 and you fall and break a hip. You go to the hospital and Medicare pays for your hip replacement. You go to a rehabilitation nursing facility and Medicare pays the full bill for the first 20 days and for all but a co-pay for the next 80 days.

The Motion Picture & Television Fund has launched a Hollywood fundraising campaign to generate $350 million in support for the charity and its nursing home that was once slated to close. On Thursday the fund announced that DreamWorks Animation Chief Executive Jeffrey Katzenberg had already helped secure more than $200 million in pledges and donations that include his own contribution and those of Tom Cruise, Steven Spielberg, Steve Bing, Casey Wasserman and George Clooney. Katzenberg and Clooney are spearheading the campaign efforts.

They just wanted her suffering to end. So they painted her nails. It didn't work. "Let's change her earrings," her father suggested softly and kindly. They did; it didn't work either. "Let's get Noel," her friend suggested. So the family, with the permission of doctors and nurses at Lehigh Valley Hospital, brought her pet dachshund to the intensive care unit. Just like at home in Bethlehem Township, Noel jumped into her bed and curled up at the ankles she could not feel.

Three years after a controversial decision to close Hollywood's best-known nursing home, the Motion Picture & Television Fund has reversed course and said it would immediately begin admitting new residents to the historic Woodland Hills facility. The decision marks a victory for residents and their families who waged a highly public campaign to fight the fund's decision in January 2009 to close the facility, known as the Motion Picture Home, and an adjoining hospital. It also revives a time-honored charity — created in 1921 by United Artists studio founders Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, D.W. Griffith and others — that has been home to Hollywood luminaries such as actors Johnny Weismuller and Hattie McDaniel and film director Stanley Kramer, whose credits include "High Noon.

A plan to help secure the future of Hollywood's most famous nursing home has been stalled by gridlock in Washington. After months of negotiations, the board of the Motion Picture & Television Fund is close to finalizing a deal with Kindred Healthcare Inc. of Louisville, Ky., to invest in long-term acute-care services at the Woodland Hills complex that includes the nursing home. Under the proposed agreement, Kindred would invest $10 million to remodel an existing hospital building and would lease hospital and rehabilitation beds from the fund.

Last week, my dad was taken on a practice run from his Northern California nursing home back to his house. He'd had recent hip surgery, and the idea was that if he could master the challenge of getting in and out of the car and the wheelchair, he could leave the facility and begin hospice care in his own home. But first he had to get there. You go down by the high school, my dad told his driver, an aide from the nursing center. The school, which my dad attended 65 years ago, was in precisely the wrong direction.

Anyone who has a loved one with Alzheimer’s disease knows the heartbreak and frustration of caring for Mom or Grandpa. Now nursing homes with Alzheimer's patients are trying novel approaches that add a heavy dose of TLC to the equation. This Newport News Daily Press story profiles one Virginia facility that encourages patients to cook, iron or perform other household tasks if they so choose. "What we're really trying to do is create home," Barbara Dearmon, Riverside Health System's memory support adviser, says in the story.

In an elder abuse case described by one investigator as the most outrageous he has ever seen, three former top managers at a Kern County nursing home have been arrested in the deaths of three residents who allegedly were given needless doses of psychotropic medications. The state attorney general's office contended in a criminal complaint that more than 20 residents at a skilled nursing center run by the Kern Valley Healthcare District were drugged "for staff convenience."

When Bob and Lynn Forthman joined Ashby Village in July 2010, they never figured they'd need its services so soon. The virtual village in Berkeley is one of 65 nationwide, with 120 more in the works. The volunteer-driven networks are meant to help seniors continue living in their homes by delivering a multitude of services they no longer can do for themselves and to help them stay engaged through social events. What started with the first village in 2001 in Boston has become a fast-growing phenomenon that could fill a crucial gap as baby boomers age and longevity increases.

The ads on Craigslist run repeatedly all year long, pleading to Los Angeles' musicians and singers. Come, they say, play. You will not be paid. In December, they seem to be everywhere. "Use your talents to bring Christmas JOY to people who really NEED us!" "Karma earned here! Join us in bringing JOY to sick, sad, lonely people. " And so men and women show up from all over the area, lugging their heavy drum sets, keyboards, amps. Singers come ready to belt out standards.