Large Nursing Home Chain Being Sued for Continued Understaffing and Other Abuses

One of the nation’s largest nursing home groups, the Preferred Care Partners Management Group is facing a lawsuit filed by the New Mexico Attorney General for a bevy of poor healthcare practices. Preferred Care Partners Management Group (PCPMG) operates nursing homes in more than ten states, including Nevada, Arizona, Texas, Mississippi, Kansas, Florida, Iowa, Colorado, Louisiana, and Oklahoma. PCPMG sought to have the suit thrown out in December 2016, but a judge ordered the case to continue forward. 

The Office of the Attorney General alleges that PCPMG failed to regularly provide toileting, incontinence care, and basic hygiene care, leaving dependent residents in dirty diapers, dirty clothes, and dirty beds for hours at a time. The lawsuit also alleged that PCPMG failed to timely respond to call lights rung by residents and that residents were left to soil themselves while waiting for assistance while others fell while attempting to walk to the bathroom unaided. Also alleged is that PCPMG failed to re-position bed-bound and immobile residents and also failed to assist dependent residents with meals and some of them suffered weight loss and dehydration.

PCPMG is one of the largest nursing home chains in the nation and any success in this high-profile case could open a floodgate of similar cases in other states as residents grow tired of having their choice of nursing care limited mostly to corporations that place more effort into finding ways to increase profit than in offering quality care. The trial is set for early 2018.