Nursing Home Workers Plead Guilty To Neglect

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Patrice Walsh (Rochester, NY) 12/06/05 — Six former nursing home
workers admitted

in court on Tuesday that they did not provide any care for one man
during a one-month period.

The workers–two nurses and four nursing assistants–were suspended
from Jennifer

Matthew Nursing Home on Portland Avenue in Rochester after a hidden
camera

investigation revealed the neglect.

They also admitted to covering up their behavior by falsifying the
patient’s records.

The patient is OK. The workers lost their jobs.

Besides pleading guilty to the charges, the workers have also agreed
to testify

in the on-going investigation. Seven others at the home have been
suspended, but not yet charged.

Under a plea deal, the charges were reduced from felonies to
misdemeanors.

LPN Felecia Thomas admitted she neglected a patient who suffered from
dementia,

but would not say why. She failed to check the patient’s vital signs
and give him

necessary treatments, and then falsified records to cover up the
neglect.

As part of her guilty plea, Thomas surrendered her nursing license.
Her attorney, Thomas DiSalvo said, “It’s tough…to have to lose her
license…

that’s what she was trained to do.”

The license of the other LPN charged, Natasha Grooms, is being reviewed.

Grooms also admitted to neglecting the same patient.

Because they pleaded guilty to neglect, neither LPN nor any of the
nursing

assistants charged will ever be able to care for a patient in a
nursing home again.

Jerry Solomon, of the NYS Attorney General’s Office, said, “By
regulation,

anyone convicted of abusing or neglecting a patient can never work
in a nursing

again”.

December 10, 2005