By Ryan Smith

I took notice of your week-long stay at the Illinois Veterans Home in Quincy. You could’ve just done the easy thing and popped by for a quick photo op while promising to fix the nursing home facility where bacteria-contaminated water caused three outbreaks of Legionnaires’ disease over as many years—killing 13 and leaving dozens of elderly veterans critically ill. Instead you showered, slept, and ate there (how was the meatloaf?). You pledged to replace the pipes and do other upgrades to the nursing home’s infrastructure.

That’s great, Bruce. Is it OK if I call you Bruce?

Some of your political opponents have called your unusual decision to lodge in Quincy “a cynical and transparent publicity stunt.” They note the conspicuous timing, following a WBEZ report about the crisis. Plus, you’re deep in campaign mode—locked in a billionaire-versus-billionaire battle against J.B. Pritzker. But I refuse to believe that you camped out at the vet facility just because of the potential political fallout. Sure, you didn’t want to be the next Rick Snyder, the Michigan governor haunted by the drinking water crisis in Flint (where deadly outbreaks of Legionnaires’ disease have also killed at least a dozen over the last few years). But you were genuinely concerned with some ailing vets, I bet.

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Tracy Rucinski

CHICAGO (Reuters) – A handful of Illinois-based nursing homes sued the state’s Department of Healthcare and Family Services on Friday, saying low Medicaid rates are jeopardizing their ability to provide adequate quality of care.

In a lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, five groups that jointly operate more than 100 skilled nursing facilities across the state said Illinois’ reimbursement rates and methodologies violated certain requirements under the Medicaid Act.

The Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services and the governor’s office did not immediately return requests for comment.

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Posted: Jan 03, 2018 8:49 PM CST Updated: Jan 04, 2018 8:56 AM CST

URBANA, Ill. (WAND) – A family is suing a nursing home after a woman’s summer death.

Workers at the Champaign County Nursing Home discovered 78-year-old Sonya Kington’s body on June 6, 2017 in an outdoor courtyard. Video surveillance at the facility showed Kington entering the courtyard area before 2 p.m., when the temperature stood at 87 degrees.

Investigators with the Illinois Department of Public Health say workers didn’t find Kington until after 5 p.m., when she had already died. Kington’s skin was hot and vomit showed on the side of her mouth. Champaign County Coroner Duane Northrup found hyperthermia caused her death and ruled it accidental.

In response, the nursing home fired two of its workers.

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By: Jocelyn Wiener – @inquirerdotnet California Healthline / INQUIRER.net US Bureau / 02:35 AM December 27, 2017
Anita Willis says the social worker offered her a painful choice: She could either leave the San Jose, California, nursing home where she’d spent a month recovering from a stroke — or come up with $336 a day to stay on.

She had until midnight to decide.

Willis’ Medicaid managed-care plan had told the home that it was cutting off payment because she no longer qualified for such a high level of care. If Willis, 58, stayed and paid the daily rate, her Social Security disability money would run out in three days. But if she left, she had nowhere to go. She’d recently become homeless after a breakup and said she couldn’t even afford a room-and-board setting.

In tears, she said, she agreed to leave. Thus began a months-long odyssey from budget motels to acquaintances’ couches to hospital ERs — at least five emergency visits in all, she said. Sometimes, her 25-year-old daughter drove down from Sacramento, and Willis slept in her daughter’s car.

Read more: https://usa.inquirer.net/9024/nursing-homes-push-poor-disabled-patients

By Dean Olsen Staff Writer

More than three months after a Springfield nursing home closed with little warning, many families and former patients of Oak Terrace Healthcare Center are waiting for refunds and wondering why they were put through such stress.

Oak Terrace’s two most recent administrators blame Home Life Companies, the Delaware, Ohio-based business whose top officials made all the key decisions involving Oak Terrace, for what they say was the company’s greed, ignorance and lack of vision.

“The residents — they didn’t have any interest in them except as a source of revenue,” former Oak Terrace administrator Tom Mullins told The State Journal-Register.′

Mullins, 71, an Oreana resident and longtime Illinois nursing home administrator, said Oak Terrace never paid him the $6,559 he was owed for his 17 days of work in August and September.

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Anita Willis says the social worker offered her a painful choice: She could either leave the San Jose, Calif., nursing home where she’d spent a month recovering from a stroke — or come up with $336 a day to stay on.

She had until midnight to decide.

Willis’ Medicaid managed-care plan had told the home that it was cutting off payment because she no longer qualified for such a high level of care. If Willis, 58, stayed and paid the daily rate, her Social Security disability money would run out in three days. But if she left, she had nowhere to go. She’d recently become homeless after a breakup and said she couldn’t even afford a room-and-board setting.

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A central Illinois jury has awarded $5.2 million to a nurse who claims she was fired from a nursing home after reporting alleged abuse.

The (Bloomington) Pantagraph reports Katrina Wesemann worked as a licensed practical nurse at a Dwight facility in 2012 when she was fired. She alleges she was let go because she wouldn’t follow a director’s orders to increase dosages of anti-anxiety medication to agitated residents and refused to change or omit records of suspicious injuries.

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Lawsuit: Former Hearthstone Communities worker says she was fired after reporting abuse