A Federal judge in Mississippi, Michael Mills, issued an order blocking a new rule that gave patients at federally funded nursing homes the right to settle disputes in court. The Judge granted a request from members of the nursing home industry to stop the rule from taking effect.
This is a loss for residents of nursing home facilities and their families. The blocked regulation prevented nursing homes from forcing claims of elder abuse, sexual harassment and even wrongful death into a private system of justice known as arbitration.
Usually when someone enters a nursing home, a contract is signed, and in the small print no one notices, there is a requirement that should a dispute arise, the dispute will go to arbitration and not be filed in the local Court. Families face a tough balancing act: get the care they need or forfeit their legal right to ask a court for help.
Arbitration can work fairly; however, it can also appear to be biased, for example, when it is conducted in the law office of the attorneys who represent the nursing home. The process is non-judicial and the results are confidential. Why is this a problem? The arbitration process hides patterns of nursing home wrongdoing from prospective residents and their families.
Unfortunately, the new regulation designed to help protect our vulnerable seniors and give them the full legal protection of the law is dead for now.
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