Melinda Haag is going after nursing homes.
The Northern District’s new U.S. attorney today announced that her office is reviewing results of a private consultant’s inquiry into nursing home complaints .
The office will “prosecute, to the fullest extent of the law, those individuals who are in violation of federal statutes,” Haag said in a prepared statement.
The announcement is one of the first indications of where the new top prosecutor plans to focus her resources.
Haag revealed her office hired the consultant two months ago, shortly after she took office, to dig up complaints from the state’s Long-Term Care Ombudsman offices in the district. The information helps “identify the worst nursing home performers in the district’s counties.”
Among the problems discovered are instances of inappropriate discharge of the frail or ill, unauthorized use of medications to retrain patients, refusal to readmit residents after they had been hospitalized and overall “poor quality of care and neglect of the residents that led to injuries and preventable illnesses,” Haag’s office said in a news release.
Prosecutors can use civil statutes, such as the False Claims Act, to go after federally funded health care programs and several criminal statutes if the “services are so deficient” that they constitute a crime,” Haag noted.
Comments