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An Alabama nursing home employee has plead guilty to stealing more than $100,000 from elderly residents.

Joseph James Feagin, Jr., 33, admitted to accessing residents’ accounts and funneling their money to him by changing payee information and issuing refund checks to himself, his boyfriend and other accomplices, according to prosecutors. The thefts happened while Feagin was a financial specialist at Wetumpka Health and Rehabilitation. He is no longer employed at the facility.

Feagin plead to one felony count of theft on Monday in Elmore County Circuit Court. He faces up to 99 years in prison on the nursing home abuse charge because he is a habitual offender, according to a story in the Montgomery Advertiser.

Wetumpka is a 121 bed, for-profit facility. The U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) gives the facility a five-star rating (much above average), which is the highest score possible.

A Kentucky nursing home employee has been charged with neglecting residents and stealing drugs.

Jinger Butler, 41, a former nurse at Cumberland Valley Manor Nursing Home, faces 11 charges of nursing home neglect and 11 counts of theft of a controlled substance following an indictment by a grand jury. Prosecutors say that Butler stole hydrocodone from 10 residents between May and November of 2010, according to a Courier-Journal story.

Butler faces up to 10 years in prison for each count of neglect and up to five years in prison for each theft count. All are considered felonies. She was arrested on Saturday by Cumberland County deputies and released on her own recognizance.

Cumberland Valley Manor is a non-profit, 84-bed facility in Burkesville, Kentucky. The U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) rates it as a two-star (below average) nursing home. While it received a four-star (above average) rating for nursing home staffing from CMS, it only received an average rating (three stars) on quality measures and a one star rating (much below average) on health inspections.

A proposed law would shield Pennsylvania nursing homes that allow abuse and neglect of residents from facing punishment through punitive damages.

The Pennsylvania House of Representatives has voted 103-89 to limit punitive damages in cases of nursing home neglect to only twice that of the compensatory amount, which is traditionally low for elderly victims. The law, HB 1907, must still be approved by the state senate and governor.

Punitive damages exist for the purpose of punishing defendants for egregious conduct. In many states they start at triple the amount of punitive damages and can be scaled up by a jury seeking to ensure that wealthy defendants, like nursing home management companies, actually are financially punished for their actions.

The bill has a proposed provision which would disregard the cap if intentional misconduct can be proven, according to a story on Aboutlawsuits.com.

An Illinois nursing home resident was found dead on Monday after wandering away from the facility on Saturday.

Police say they found the body of Aubrey Giles, 75, in a wooded area near a creek near the Midwest Rehab assisted-living center in Belleville. Giles left the facility without a coat sometime before 7:30 p.m. on Saturday. He suffered from a heart condition and needed daily medication according to a story from St. Louis Today.

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.

A West Virginia nursing home worker has been sentenced to up to three years in prison after pleading guilty to trying to sexually abuse an incapacitated 81-year-old woman.

The incident occurred at the Chateau Adult Care Facility in January 2010. Prosecutors accused Darren Canada, 41, of nursing home abuse and neglect, saying he sexually assaulted the woman and jumped out of a window when caught in the act. He originally faced multiple charges, but plead guilty to attempting to commit a felony, according to a story on WSAZ.com.

Elderly care abuse can take many different forms, including physical, sexual or mental. It reduces quality of life for the victims and robs them of dignity, as well as possibly inflicting permanent and debilitating physical damage. Recognizing the signs of abuse can be difficult, and in many cases the victims are too humiliated to talk about what occurred. Signs of elderly care abuse can include:

• Unusual injuries or broken bones
• Unexplained loss of hair
• Changes in behavior of nursing home staff towards a resident, or residents toward one another.