3 Arrested In Nursing Home Deaths In Lake Isabella
"In an elder abuse case described by one investigator as the most outrageous he has ever seen, three former top managers at a Kern County nursing home have been arrested in the deaths of three residents who allegedly were given needless doses of psychotropic medications.
The state attorney general's office contended in a criminal complaint that more than 20 residents at a skilled nursing center run by the Kern Valley Healthcare District were drugged "for staff convenience." Many of them experienced side effects that included dramatic weight loss, slurred speech, tremors, loss of cognition and even psychosis, according to the complaint.
Arraignment is scheduled this morning for the center's one-time medical director, Dr. Hoshang M. Pormir, former nursing director Gwen D. Hughes and former chief pharmacist Debbi C. Hayes. They were jailed in Bakersfield on Wednesday.
"These people maliciously violated the trust of their patients by holding them down and forcibly administering psychotropic medications if they dared to question their care," state Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown said.
All three have been charged with elder abuse. Hughes and Hayes, who are accused of administering shots by force and without consent, also face charges of assault with a deadly weapon.
The complaint paints a bleak picture of a facility dominated by nursing director Hughes, 55, who is accused of seeking to drug all but the most docile residents. Medical director Pormir, 48, allegedly rubber-stamped Hughes' orders for medication, failed to examine patients and was "either willfully or naively ignorant" of his proper role, according to the complaint. Pharmacist Hayes, 51, told investigators that she went along because Hughes had wide experience in psychiatric hospitals, the complaint says.
Hughes had been fired from a convalescent home in Fresno in 1999 for allegedly overmedicating patients there, according to state officials.", .....
California is Near Bankruptcy. The California legislature remains Unwilling to Cut Spending.
The Real Science on Antipsychotics is IN, despite FDA labels and Their waffling characterizations of these Virulent Toxins.
We commend California Attorney General Jerry Brown for recognizing antipsychotics as what they are: Deadly Weapons, .....
California Needs Money, LOTS of MONEY. Some years back the Settlements with Big Tobacco brought in LOTS of MONEY.Where might California Get that MONEY, ......
as California's Children are being Brain Damaged, Wholesale, by State Licensed, State Funded, Drug Pushers?
For more complete coverage see this article in the Kern Valley Sun
See also the release from California's Office of The Attorney General
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