A Connecticut nursing home is under investigation for potential nursing home neglect in the death of a dementia resident who allegedly wandered away from the facility in his wheelchair and rolled down a hill to his death late last month.

Investigators say Percy Sumner, 88, fell out of his wheelchair after careening down a 44-foot grassy embankment on August 21. He smashed through a vinyl picket fence, over a rock wall, and then hit his head on the cement. He died late that day at a nearby hospital.

Sumner was a resident of the Bishops Corner Skilled Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in West Hartford, which is now under investigation by the state Department of Public Health as a result of his death. Nursing home staff members have told investigators that Sumner was seen headed for the door that morning but had been sent back to his room. He was placed on a 15-minute check cycle to ensure he did not elope from the facility, nursing home officials say, but he fled between checks.

Sumner’s nursing home elopement set off a door alarm and his personal alarm, but he was not sighted by staff until after the accident, according to a story in the Hartford Courant.

Federal regulations have a requirement that all elder care facilities conduct a nursing home wandering and elopement assessment of every new resident. That assessment needs to be updated on a regular basis, or when their medical condition changes. That assessment needs to include a written plan of care which details the functionality of the resident and the risk of them attempting to leave the facility. This assessment forms the basis, in part, of the amount of supervision they should receive and how much attention should be paid to preventing them from leaving the facility.

California is dismissing an increasing number of criminal charges brought against people suspected of committing nursing home abuse, and is cutting down on surprise inspections meant to curtail nursing home neglect, according to California Watch, a state consumer advocacy organization.

Attorney General Jerry Brown’s move toward less oversight of California nursing homes and more lenient treatment of suspected abuse perpetrators comes after a tenure by Bill Lockyer, who made nursing home neglect and abuse prevention a top priority, the organization said in a SFGate.com story. The state was just recently the site of a record-breaking $677 million jury award in a nursing home class-action lawsuit that claimed that nursing home franchise giant Skilled Healthcare cut staff to dangerous levels.

In addition to the reduction in prosecutions and inspections, California Watch also claims Brown’s office has reduced nursing home abuse training for state law enforcement officials. It has not held a training session on the issue in three years and has none scheduled.

However, the organization claims that Brown has increased enforcement in the area of Medicare fraud to go after those nursing homes that may be cheating the state out of reimbursement money.

A judge has rejected a call for a mistrial by a California nursing home chain that got hit by a $677 million nursing home neglect verdict in July. In addition, the court has issued an injunction against the company to force it to meet statewide nursing home staff level requirements immediately.

The motions came on the heels of a head-turning, record verdict handed down in a nursing home class-action lawsuit against Skilled Healthcare earlier this summer. The company is one of the nation’s largest nursing home franchises, with 78 facilities. A Humboldt County jury determined that Skilled Healthcare failed to meet state requirements for nursing home staff, and was staffed at dangerously low levels.

Defense attorneys attempted to get a mistrial, saying that there was bias and juror misconduct. However, jurors signed sworn statements saying there was no misconduct or bias. Skilled Healthcare’s stocks have plummeted in the wake of the decision, and experts say that the company is likely to file for bankruptcy if it is forced to meet the verdict’s requirements, and there does not appear to be any obvious grounds for having the verdict overturned.

Skilled Healthcare attorneys are now trying to have Judge Bruce Watson recused from the case and to have it tried again, according to a story in the Times-Standard.

Indiana nursing homes that commit nursing home neglect and abuse have little fear of licensing action being taken against them, according to an investigative report by a local paper.

The Indianapolis Star found that only 2% of all reports of problems in nursing homes gets forwarded from the attorney general’s office for licensing or law enforcement action, even in such serious instances as rape. In fact, out of 300 incidents forwarded to the Attorney General’s office over the last five years, in only six instances did the office file an official complaint triggering a review by the Indiana State Board of Health Facility Administrators.

Unless the complaints are forwarded, the board does not have the opportunity to review the cases and possibly recommend disciplinary or corrective action. In five of the six cases reported, the board decided to take action.

Responding to the story, state officials said that there are sometimes informal actions taken to discipline administrators and some said that the ability of the AG had a narrowly defined definition of what cases it could forward to the Board.

The former management company of a Massachusetts nursing home has been ordered to pay $400,000 to the step daughter of a 93-year-old man who lost an eye after being struck by a nursing home crane used to move patients between beds and wheelchairs.

Earlier this month, a Brockton Superior Court jury found that Kindred Healthcare was liable for the loss of an eye sustained by John J. Donahue in 2005. Donahue died 47 days later, but the jury did not find that the injury contributed to his death when they decided on the nursing home neglect claim.

Kindred Healthcare is the former owner of the Embassy Rehabilitation and Health Center in Brockton. The accident occurred when Mellange Mathieu, a certified nursing assistant at the nursing home, attempted to use a Hoyer lift to move Donahue. However, the lift requires two people to operate, and Mathieu attempted to use the lift on her own. She was fired from the nursing home and her certification was suspended for six months following the accident.

The jury award will go to Donahue’s stepdaughter, Marlene Owens, 75, of South Easton. She is Donahue’s last living known relative, according to a story in the Patriot Ledger.