New York Personal Injury Attorneys Blog
To prevent nursing home neglect or abuse, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the States send teams of inspectors to survey nursing homes on a regular basis to assure that facilities meet the quality of care standard required by Medicare and Medicaid.
These teams look for deficiencies in the quality of care provided to their elderly patients and for deficiencies in the safety requirements such as protection from fire hazards. Most nursing homes have some deficiencies. The national average of deficiency per inspection is 6 to 7 per nursing home. However a minority of nursing homes have more than twice the average number of deficiencies and have more serious problem than others, including reports of harm and injury to patients.
Nursing homes that have a pattern of serious problems for more than 3 years are enlisted in the Special Focus Facility Initiative and can be barred from Medicare and Medicaid participation if they don’t address their problems within a reasonable period of time.
Every year in NYC more than 45,000 seniors suffer personal injury that requires medical treatment after a fall. Around 28,000 of them visit the Emergency Room, 17,000 are hospitalized and 300 die from their injuries. As the New York aging population continues to grow so do the number of personal injuries related to falls. In the report Falls Among Older Adults in New York City, The New York Department of Health indicates that there was an increase of 22% of fall related emergency department visits by seniors between 2006 and 2010. 
When the power goes down, portable generators are very handy products but they are deadly if not used properly. Carbon monoxide poisoning from the the toxic engine exhaust can happen in minutes if a generator is used indoors! From 1999 to 2012, the Consumer Product Safety Commission received 547 reports of Carbon Monoxide Exposure incidents associated with portable generators. 732 people died as a result of these incidents (see 
