New York’s Attorney General Eliot Spitzer is ready to crack down on substandard nursing homes.
According to Spitzer, the Jennifer Matthew Nursing and Rehabilitation Center neglected patients and denied them medication. From an editorial in the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle:
Hidden cameras helped reveal, Spitzer claims, that residents were routinely left lying in waste while staff napped, that medication was denied and that help call bells were put out of reach of patients. Spitzer wants the home shut down and has put long-term care providers on notice that their facilities may face similar scrutiny.
Aggressive investigation and prosecution of homes allegedly like this is appropriate, but hidden cameras can’t be everywhere. The shameful treatment alleged at Jennifer Matthew should inspire families and advocates to do what they can to make sure others don’t suffer in similar conditions.
At least fourteen of the nursing home’s employees have been suspended without pay.
Let me add the caveat that Spitzer has a reputation for being extremely aggressive in pursuing businesses and of unfairly using the media to bias jury pools. For instance, see this op-ed published in the Opinion Journal last Spring:
In dispute in the AIG case are highly complex transactions that may have reduced the company’s shareholder equity of $82.9 billion by as much as 2%. It’s not yet known if the total losses will reach that level, nor if they were material to AIG as a whole. After Mr. Greenberg’s departure, the board ran up the white flag to Attorney General Spitzer and declared the transactions “improper.”
Were they? One proper way to resolve this would be to create a policy framework with clear rules, which does not currently exist. Another way would have been for the Securities and Exchange Commission to negotiate an earnings restatement with AIG.
But Mr. Spitzer reportedly threatened a criminal indictment, which in effect would have put AIG out of business. Then he went on television to pronounce that the AIG transactions were “wrong” and “illegal,” which some legal scholars say is unusual. It’s not yet clear what the charges are. Nor has Mr. Spitzer heard Mr. Greenberg’s side of the story.
So the New York attorney general both charges and convicts in the court of public opinion. This pattern of overcriminalization is of deep concern to many chief executives. The proper process is for judges or juries to convict defendants only after convincing themselves that a charge has been proven “beyond a reasonable doubt.” Too much publicity can be deemed prejudicial.
After Spitzer was criticized in a different editorial in the Wall Street Journal, he allegedly did this to the author of that piece:
Last April, The Wall Street Journal published an op-ed piece by me titled “Mr. Spitzer Has Gone Too Far.” In it I expressed my belief that in America, everyone–including Hank Greenberg–is innocent until proven guilty. “Something has gone seriously awry,” I wrote, “when a state attorney general can go on television and charge one of America’s best CEOs and most generous philanthropists with fraud before any charges have been brought, before the possible defendant has even had a chance to know what he personally is alleged to have done, and while the investigation is still under way.”
Since there have been rumors in the media as to what happened next, I feel I must now set the record straight. After reading my op-ed piece, Mr. Spitzer tried to phone me. I was traveling in Texas but he reached me early in the afternoon. After asking me one or two questions about where I got my facts, he came right to the point. I was so shocked that I wrote it all down right away so I would be sure to remember it exactly as he said it. This is what he said:
“Mr. Whitehead, it’s now a war between us and you’ve fired the first shot. I will be coming after you. You will pay the price. This is only the beginning and you will pay dearly for what you have done. You will wish you had never written that letter.”
Long term care and other health providers should first be concerned about the overcriminalization taking place because prosecutors are often coming after you by “hiding the ball” about what you actually did wrong and by publicizing their “busts” in order to win in the court of public opinion and to intimidate your supporters.
None of us, as we sit here, knows exactly what happened in that Nursing Home. The jury should decide this–not the court of public opinion. Press releases by Prosecutors are self-serving and not necessarily accurate. Sometimes, making political points trumps justice.
Take this with a large grain of salt and see what the jury decides. That is, if they can get one that is not poisoned by this kind of publicity.
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