According to the Melrose Free Press,  a nurse aid at EPOCH Senior Health Care was charged with elder abuse for allegedly punching and pushing an 83-year old resident that has Alzheimer’s disease.    According to the newspaper article the victim’s roommate witnessed the incident which occurred in September 2008.  Here is an excerpt form the story:

Melrose – UPDATED MONDAY, AUG. 17 AT 4:54 P.M.:A former certified nurse aide at Melrose’s EPOCH Senior Healthcare nursing home was arraigned in Malden District Court yesterday on charges that she punched and pushed down an 83-year-old resident of the nursing home who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease.
Jill Butterworth, spokeswoman for the state Attorney General’s Office, said the alleged assault took place on Sept. 17, 2008. The victim got out of her bed at the nursing home, located at 15 Green St. in Melrose, around 4 a.m., according to a press release from the Attorney General’s Office, and began to wander around her room.

The CEO of EPOCH Senior Health Care issued a statement which reads in part (full text here, scroll down):

“We are appalled by these allegations. We have from the start, and will continue to fully cooperate with the attorney general’s office to assist with the investigation and prosecution, and if these allegations are true, we want the individual convicted and appropriately punished.

“Immediately upon learning of the allegations in September 2008, we took all the appropriate actions. EPOCH immediately suspended the employee and notified the authorities. Upon completion of our internal investigation, the employee was terminated. The Massachusetts Department of Public Health conducted an investigation at EPOCH of Melrose and did not find any deficiencies in how EPOCH handled the situation.

The Cape Cod Times reports that two nurse’s aides were fired from Harborside Healthcare in Falmouth after one allegedly bruised a resident’s hand and the other twisted the neck of the same patient’s stuffed animal.  State DPH officials had previously sited the 120 bed facility with deficient care issues in September 2006.

The facility is owned by Harborside Healthcare a company that is headquartered in Boston, and operates 53 facilities nationwide including these eight other failities in Massachusetts Cedar Glen (Westfield); Danvers Twin Oaks (Danvers); Maplewood (Amesbury); Mashpee Harborside (Mashpee); Northshore Harborside (Saugus); The Stone Institute (Newton Upper Falls); Wakefield Harborside (Wakefield) and Westfield Harborside (Westfield).

 Here is the Cape Cod Times article:

 FALMOUTH – Two nurse’s aides were fired from a local nursing home after one allegedly bruised a resident’s hand and the other twisted the neck of the same patient’s stuffed animal in September, the home’s administrator said Thursday.
 State Department of Public Health officials last week called on Harborside Healthcare in Falmouth to fix the problems that led to the alleged abuse and other incidents of ‘’substandard quality of care.”
They also recommended that the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services impose fines of $50 to $3,000 a day for every day Harborside is not in compliance with regulations and possibly terminate the home’s ability to take Medicare or Medicaid patients.
 John Bonfardeci, administrator for Harborside Healthcare, said the alleged actions by the nurse’s aides constitute abuse, although he said both denied the accusations. Staff members have begun retraining to ensure there are no future incidents.
 ”We have a responsibility to educate our staff and I think we have been very thorough with that. But we are doing it all over again,” Bonfardeci said.
 Harborside in Falmouth is one of nine nursing homes the national company owns in Massachusetts, including one in Mashpee.
 The Falmouth home has 120 staff members and as many beds for patients, according to the company’s Web site.
 The nursing home’s array of services includes a special program for patients with dementia.
On Sept. 29, a nurse’s aide squeezed and bruised the hand of a ”combative resident,” according to Bonfardeci. Nursing home officials did not learn about the incident until the following day, the administrator said. Federal regulations require nursing home staff members to immediately report any suspected abuse.
Based on interviews with staff, Bonfardeci learned that a second nurse’s aide had twisted the teddy bear in front of the patient.
 ”It’s definitely a form of mental anguish,” he said.
 In total, six staff members witnessed or heard about the alleged abuse, but did not immediately report it.
The two aides, who had never been disciplined previously, were terminated. The other staffers received a written warning in their files. All employees were retrained and tested on the proper notification procedures, Bonfardeci said.
 ”I believe my staff does a really good job,” Bonfardeci said. ”Do I believe there are bad apples in that those people did something wrong? Absolutely.”
The recent incident comes on the heels of a poor evaluation during the state’s September recertification review of the home. The inspectors found them deficient in the area of ”quality of care.”
 According to DPH’s September report, the staff failed to initiate treatment for pressure sores in a timely fashion and failed to provide a program to prevent or fully investigate falls.
 ”The question is, why are the residents developing bedsores? That is significant. Why are people falling? What is being done to prevent them from falling?” said Caronanne Procaccini, program director of Cape United Elders, which administers a nursing home ombudsman program under the Community Action Committee. ”These are two significant quality of care issues.”
 Bonfardeci said the staff adequately treated and assessed sores and falls.
 But Harborside did not have the proper documentation to back up their work to prevent patient falls.
”What we are doing now is documenting that intervention better,” Bonfardeci said.
 State officials referred Harborside to the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services – an arm of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that oversees all things related to Medicare and Medicaid – for reprimand.
 The agency has yet to issue a decision, spokeswoman Helen Mulligan said.
 By AMANDA LEHMERT
Cape Cod Times
October 30, 2006