Nursing homes want panel to review lawsuits against them

"A long-term care industry group wants a new law in Kentucky that would create medical review panels to evaluable potential lawsuits against nursing homes, personal care homes and some facilities for the intellectually and developmentally disabled," reports Valarie Honeycutt Spears of the Lexington Herald-Leader.

The panel would be made up of three physicians and chaired by an attorney who would not be allowed to vote. The panel's findings would be admissible in court. The panel would "help eliminate frivolous lawsuits against the long-term care industry," said Ruby Jo Cummins Lubarsky, president of the Kentucky Association of Health Care Facilities. "Kentucky's long-term care profession has seen a drastic increase in litigation from lawyers whose sole practice has been limited to targeting our nursing facilities. Their primary tactic is to exploit the integrity of our survey process with misleading advertisements designed to alarm the public about a supposed failure to provide quality care in our facilities."

The Kentucky Justice Association, formerly the Kentucky Academy of Trial Attorneys, is against the proposal because it "makes nursing home corporations less accountable for the neglect and abuse of Kentucky's elderly citizens," said Maresa Fawns, the association's executive director. Bernie Vonderheide, founder of Kentuckians for Nursing Home Reform, is also opposed, saying the formation of medical review panels is "blatantly unfair to residents of nursing homes."

The proposal has not yet been filed for the 2012 General Assembly. House Speaker Greg Stumbo, a lawyer, has said he "would never support any measure that would deny a person his or her day in court if injured," but added he understands "that small, rural nursing homes are in extreme jeopardy because of out-of-state predatory law firms. Given that, the only responsible thing is to gather information on the issue and keep an open mind." (Read more)

Child abuse reviews show failed communication in agency

A picture of failed communication is developing as reporters sift through 86 internal reviews of incidents of child abuse, says an editorial in today's Lexington Herald-Leader. The Cabinet for Health and Family Services released the reviews last week under court order.

"This pattern of failed communication only came to light because this newspaper and Louisville's Courier-Journal have aggressively pursued these records in court and Franklin Circuit Judge Phillip Shepherd has relentlessly pushed the cabinet to open the records," the editorial reads.

The piece highlights several instances where communication breakdown led to tragic events, beginning with the case of 9-year-old Amy Dye, right, in which a school nurse had written six reports about suspected abuse or injuries. The cabinet's file only contained three of them.

Madaline Grace Reynolds died when she didn't get the medicine she needed to treat her cystic fibrosis. The review found the child-protection worker did not look into whether or not her parents had filled her prescriptions.

"But the faulty communication doesn't stop there," the editorial reads, referring to Tuesday's hearing by the Interim Joint Health and Welfare Committee in which legislators came down hard on the cabinet for "failing to inform them about regulations that prevented it from investigating abuse by a sibling, such as in Amy Dye's case," the editorial reads.

"The cabinet, indeed the entire executive branch, has shown it won't fully address these issues without the hot, bright light of outside pressure," the editorial concludes. "The courts have acted responsibly and forcefully. Now, the legislature must take up the painstaking and painful job of examining the cabinet's work, finding the missed connections and fixing them." (Read more)

Substance abuse conference will be held at Lexington Marriott Jan. 18-19; attendance will be limited to the first 250 registrants

Seeking to build collaborations and partnerships to help deal with prescription drug abuse, a conference called "The Different Faces of Substance Abuse" will be held Jan. 18-19 at the Marriott Griffin Gate Resort in Lexington.

The featured speaker Jan. 19 will be Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, who will lead a discussion about the fight against pill mills. Participants can also attend two of eight breakout sessions that day:

• Overcoming addiction and obstacles to treatment

• Take-back program

• Creating a local drug-free alliance

• UK Cooperative Extension Service substance abuse prevention programs

• Creating a youth program

• The law-enforcement perspective

• A regional initiative aimed at reducing and preventing prescription drug abuse in youth

• Unique characteristics of prescription drug abuse and ways to target them

Registration starts at 10 a.m. Jan. 18. Presentations begin at noon. The first day's speakers include Demetria Antimisaris, assistant professor in the University of Louisville School of Medicine; Dave Hopkins, program manager for the Kentucky All Schedule Prescription Electronic Reporting (KASPER) in the Office of the Inspector General; Van Ingram, executive director for the Kentucky Office of Drug Control Policy, and Jared Combs, pharmacist clinical staff at UK HealthCare.

The conference is sponsored by the University of Kentucky's colleges of agriculture, social work and pharmacy; the Lexington Mayor's Alliance on Substance Abuse, the Fayette County Kentucky Agency for Substance Abuse Policy, the Kentucky Division of Behavioral Health and the Ohio County Assets for Youth.

Space is limited to the first 250 registrants. To register, click here. Cost is $100 plus hotel fees. For more information, click here.