Daughter Of Woman Allegedly Injured In Nursing Home Pushes For Patient Monitoring
(CBS) -- The push is on to get surveillance cameras all over nursing homes, even in patient's rooms.
The state's attorney general supports the extra set of eyes and ears and so does the daughter of a woman allegedly injured, reports Suzanne Le Mignot.
"If it wasn't for that video, I would've never known what happened with my mother," says Lisa Lopez says on how she learned of her mother falling, breaking her hip, femur and fracturing her pelvis. "I would never have learned the truth."
"She went to take the blanket off and that's when my mother's whole side of the hip was bent and sticking out," she says.
Lopez says her mother, suffering from chronic encephalopathy (abnormal brain function), was in the care of Concord Nursing and Rehab Center, now known as, Aperion Care Oak Lawn, when she fell.
Lopez says she told the facility that her mother needs to stay in a wheelchair, "Because she couldn't walk."
"If we didn't have access to the video, as I said, you're kind of stuck with what the incident reports indicate, if an incident report is filled out."
Lopez filed a negligence lawsuit against the facility. She says she needed to have to fight in order to get the video.
"If we didn't have access to the video, as I said, you're kind of stuck with what the incident reports indicate, if an incident report is filled out," says Attorney Tara Devine with the law firm, Salvi, Schostok & Pritchard in Chicago.
She says she needed to have to fight and get a lawyer in order to get the video and when she saw it, "It was horrific. It was horrifying. To see exactly what happened.
"The phone call, they even told me, she fell out of her wheelchair," Lopez said. "It was a regular chair."
In a statement Aperion Care Oak Lawn says: "The facility does its best to maintain the highest quality of care for its residents. There have been and continue to be changes and improvements made there."
Atty. Gen. Lisa Madigan in September proposed legislation, to allowing families to have video or audio monitoring devices in their love ones rooms at nursing homes.
"We think that it's a great idea to use, inexpensive technology to give both family members peace of mind, but to make sure that there is quality care being given in these nursing facilities," Madigan says.
Lopez says, "I just think they really need to pass this law."
Her mother, Jean Mangan, died about four months after she was injured. The cause: congestive heart failure.
Madigan says the proposed legislation came from public complaints from those with loved ones in nursing homes. If it becomes law, families would be able to place cameras and audio equipment, on their own, in loved ones room, to monitor them, 24-7 with consent.