The Elmwood Nursing and Rehab Center in Maryville, Illinois is not conducting background checks with the Illinois State Police Sex Offender Registration.
Illinois requires that background checks be conducted for all new nursing home residents. Their failure to do so is putting every resident of the facility in jeopardy.
On April 11th, a nursing home inspector for the State of Illinois requested that the Elmwood Nursing and Rehab Center provide the criminal history background checks for the 10 most recent new admissions to the facility. The residents were admitted to the facility between February and April.
When Elmwood Nursing and Rehab provided the State Police Sex Offender forms, they were all dated April 11th, 2012 – the same day the requests were made. Needless to say, the Illinois nursing home inspectors weren’t impressed. In the subsequent investigation, the Director of Operations for Elmwood Nursing and Rehab admitted that no criminal histories had been checked in over a year.
Few people without loved ones in nursing homes understand that nursing homes only need to contain 51% of seniors to maintain federal and state nursing home funding. In an effort to fill beds, nursing homes will often take in a menagerie of residents with problems that the nursing home may not be qualified to treat.
Often, nursing homes will have young people with severe mental disorders that drive them to violent actions serving as roommates for the elderly. This often leads to resident violence in nurisng homes. Tragically, sexual offenders often find their way into nursing homes where they continue their legacy of assaults on the helpless and unsuspecting residents. By failing to conduct background checks, the staff at Elmwood Nursing and Rehab put every resident’s well being danger.
As a Chicago nursing home lawyer, I grow suspicious every time a circumstance like this reveals itself. While it might be a simple case of incompetence and nursing home neglect, it might be something far more insidious. In Illinois, for example, a resident with a criminal history needs to be given a private room, and special interventions need to be made to keep other residents safe. With no background check, of course, none of these extra expenses are necessary.
If you have a loved one who has been injured by another resident in an Illinois nursing home, contact our Chicago nursing home lawyers today. You can speak to me or one of my colleagues for no cost and with no obligation. We welcome your call.