Substandard care in nursing homes around the country has driven some families to turn to surveillance cameras to monitor the care of their loved ones. In addition to use by families to catch suspected abusers, surveillance cameras are also now being used by some law enforcement officials and facility managers. According to the Seattle Times, camera use has already been used by an Ohio man to catch nursing home workers abusing his mother, in a wrongful death lawsuit in New Jersey...
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In a new report released by AARP, The Commonwealth Fund and The SCAN Foundation, southern states are shown to lag far behind in providing reasonably priced, high-quality long-term care support services for the elderly. The State Long-Term Services and Supports Scorecard (LTSS) shows a high concentration of southeastern states fall into the bottom quartile (bottom 25%). States occupying the bottom quartile are Mississippi, Alabama, West Virginia, Oklahoma, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Florida, Louisiana, Georgia, New York, and...
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According to the New York Times, the Department of Health and Human Services released a study this year that finds 92 percent of nursing homes in the country have at least one employee with a criminal conviction on his or her record. When looking at the employees as a whole, five percent have at least one conviction, in a sample size of over 35,000.

The report also states that nearly half of the facilities employed five or more such individuals. Only ten states require a background check of F.B.I....
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Pharmaceutical companies may have illegally promoted atypical antipsychotic drugs (AAP) for dangerous off-label uses in nursing homes, according to report by the Department of Health and Human Services. Given the possible deadly side effects of these drugs when used on patients with dementia, this is particularly alarming.

Patients with dementia treated with these atypical antipsychotic drugs were determined to have a risk of death 1.6 to 1.7 times those treated with a placebo, and as a result, in 2005...
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