Missouri Nursing Homes and the Attorney General

We have written several posts concerning resources for individuals to research and review the quality of care provided by a particular nursing home.  Additionally, we have provided resources that concerned family members or loved ones can utilize if they are concerned about ongoing care problems at nursing home or long term care facility.  There is another, albeit lesser known, option available in Missouri, which is to report the facility to the Missouri Attorney General’s office. 

Missouri’s Omnibus Nursing Home Act is Missouri’s statutory scheme to govern nursing homes operating within the state.  From a legal perspective, the Nursing Home Act contains a number of important provisions outlining how nursing homes operating a facility within Missouri must be licensed, maintain records, comply with various state standards, and many other regulatory requirements.  For the purposes of this post, however, there is one section in particularly I want to focus on—Section 198.093: Violations of resident’s rights—complaints—legal actions—damages.

Section 198.093 allows a resident to file with the attorney general a complaint of an alleged deprivation or injury while at a nursing facility.  It is important to note, though, that the complaint needs to be filed “within one hundred eighty days of the alleged deprivation or injury.”  Upon reviewing the complaint, if the attorney general does not initiate legal action within sixty days of receipt of the complaint, a civil action can be brought against the nursing home for specified violations under the Missouri Nursing Home Act.

It is additionally worth noting that filing a complaint with the attorney general can, in some circumstances, allow for the recovery of punitive damages and attorneys’ fees that may not otherwise have been available.

Ultimately, the Missouri Nursing Home Act is one more resource available to residents—and the family of those residents—trying to ensure they are receiving the car they desire while at a nursing facility.    

-Ryan

The Importance of Understanding Tort Reform

In our previous post, titled Reforming How We Think About Tort Reform, we indicated that over the next year we would be publishing several posts addressing the impact of tort reform on health care and set forth the facts behind a number of the arguments frequently bandied about when it comes to this topic.  Within weeks of publishing that post, an excellent example of the importance of understanding the facts and the driving forces behind the arguments was published in the Kansas City Star. 

On December 29, 2013, Lancer Gates, D.O published an op-ed piece in the Star outlining his concerns over the Missouri Supreme Court’s recent ruling that the Missouri cap on non-economic damages was unconstitutional.  In doing so, he offers a number of standard pro-tort reform arguments—namely that the absence of tort reform drives up the cost of health care while diminishing the quality of health care.  In referencing life in Missouri in the absence of a cap on non-economic damages:  “As a result, lawsuit premiums skyrocketed,driving physicians out of their practices, compromising patient access to care,decreasing the quality of health care services and generating higher healthcare costs for everyone.”  There is virtually nothing in the article offered as support for these significant accusations and at least some of the facts that are offered as support are highly debatable as has been effectively noted by Brett Emison here.

I’m not going to go through the problems with some of Dr. Gates’ facts.  I point out this article because it exemplifies the problem with the debate over tort reform—the substitution of fact based reasoning with fear inducing platitudes.  Our hope is to replace these fear based arguments with facts and context about tort reform, its purpose, and its impact on health care.  

-Ryan