Crystal Lake Nursing Home Abuse: Nursing Assistant Charged with Aggravated Battery of an Elderly Person in Pain Patch Licking Incident
Jeremiah J. Healless, a former nursing home worker at Fair Oaks Health Center, is accused of Illinois nursing home abuse. The 25-year-old Harvard man allegedly had had been poking holes in a female patient’s Fentanyl patch and squeezing the patch so he could take the drug himself. Healless is charged with aggravated battery to an elderly person in connection with the pain patch-licking incident.
The Crystal Lake nursing home abuse was discovered after other workers at the assisted living facility noticed that the 92-year-old Alzheimer patient’s pain patch was an unusual color. They asked her family’s permission to set up video surveillance in her room.
Unfortunately, the theft of pain medication from elderly nursing home residents is not as rare an occurrence as one would hope. In an unrelated case, former care home manager and registered nurse Rachel Baker has been sentenced to 10 years behind bars for the death of a 97-year-old resident.
Baker is accused of giving Lucy Cox lethal doses of medicine even as she abused controlled drugs that she had stolen from the assisted living facility. She was convicted of manslaughter in Cox’s death but acquitted of the manslaughter death of another elderly patient.
Baker would divert residents’ drugs for her own use. She took Cox’s diamorphine for herself and instead administered tramadol to the elderly woman. Though tramadol is considered a weaker substitute, Baker gave Cox too much of the drug.
In yet another case involving drug theft at a nursing home, Hilary Hartwig, a physical therapist, is charged with theft related to taking a painkilling drug patch from a 94-year-old patient at Bonell Good Samaritan Center. Hartwig admits to similar thefts at other assisted living facilities.
10-year term for care home manager, AP/Google, May 21, 2010
Police: Greeley woman admits stealing pain meds from elderly, The Tribune, May 13, 2010
Police: Nursing assistant licked drugs from patient's patch, Northwest Herald, May 17, 2010
Related Web Resources:
Drug Diversion: The Scope of the Problem, RecoveringNurses
Chicago, Illinois nursing home abuse lawyer Steve Malman is dedicated to helping patients and their families hold negligent assisted living facilities liable for any harm suffered.
