A bottom-line mentality in modern nursing home chains is clashing with a creaky regulatory system, a mixture that can leave vulnerable patients in unlicensed assisted-living facilities that are often inadequate and sometimes dangerous.
Maryland
Regulatory Black Holes, Company Profits: Maryland Nursing Home Patients Face Great Risks
In December, a 59-year-old woman who cannot speak after throat cancer surgery was left outside of a Baltimore homeless center with no money and no phone — in a city where she had no family and no close friends.
Why Do People End Up In Unlicensed Assisted Living Homes?
Vonda Wagner and Andrew Edwards said they were kicked out of their licensed nursing homes and wound up in an unlicensed assisted living facility. Here’s how that happens in Maryland…
Maryland Nursing Home Regulator Struggling To Keep Up
As complaints rise throughout the nursing home system in Maryland, state nursing home regulators have a persistent staffing problem and are struggling to keep up.
How a Broken Federal System Threatens Elderly Patients’ Safety
A common event that can force someone out of a nursing home involves disputes over money, particularly the finer details of two government health insurance programs for the elderly, Medicare and Medicaid.
Maryland health group attacks high costs of prescription drugs
With EpiPens and other prescription drugs rising in cost, families who desperately need them but do not have health insurance are bearing a huge financial burden, according to community advocates.
Maryland joins suit against recovery-drug maker as opioid overdoses rise
Health department reports more than 900 opioid-related deaths in Maryland for the first half of this year — a large jump.
Efforts ramp up in Maryland to bring back vanishing state insect
ANNAPOLIS, Maryland — When Wayne Skinner started volunteering at Cromwell Valley Park in Baltimore County five years ago, he expected to see orange-and-black-spotted Baltimore checkerspot butterflies flying around the park.
Franchot, NAACP: lack of air conditioning in Balt. Co. schools a civil rights issue
The Maryland comptroller and an NAACP official say a disproportionate number of poor students are suffering without air conditioning, and are calling on the federal government to investigate Baltimore County schools for what they say are civil rights violations.
Population without health insurance is decreasing more slowly in Maryland than U.S. average
Almost every state saw the percentage of residents without health insurance decrease between 2014 and 2015, in part because of the expansion of coverage under the Affordable Care Act