Firm urges action to address decline in quality of nursing home care

Recently, U.S. News & World Report ranked Illinois 47th out of 50 states for nursing home quality and care. It is shameful but not surprising.

Nursing home care in Illinois has declined significantly in recent years. This is a tragedy for nursing residents and their families and one that Illinois lawmakers must address immediately especially as our population is aging and more of our residents will require nursing home care in the future.

A key reason for the decline in care is that there is little accountability in Illinois for nursing homes. This is especially true for privately owned ones who scam the system and continue to find new ways to circumvent state regulations and laws to make big profits. Too often their business model is getting as much money out of each facility as possible while providing substandard care for residents.

In the past, allowing nursing victims and their families to hold nursing homes accountable by pursuing their rights through the Illinois Nursing Home Care Act provided an incentive to nursing homes to provide better care. When the Illinois Nursing Home Care Act was passed in 1979 to protect vulnerable residents from abuse and neglect, there was an acknowledgment that state and local governments cannot police nursing homes on their own and that private attorneys, acting like attorney generals, would help to hold nursing homes accountable.

Our law firm, Levin & Perconti, is proud to have been the first to file a lawsuit under the Illinois Nursing Home Care Act. Since then, we have successfully represented thousands of nursing home residents, and their families as have other law firms in Illinois. Victims received justice and the nursing homes were being held accountable.

But in recent years, the Illinois Nursing Home Care Act has been rendered a nullity due to unscrupulous tactics used by many nursing homes to avoid liability. They have found loopholes and exploited the lack of financial transparency in Illinois laws to avoid legal judgments and accountability. The number of lawyers willing to take on these cases without knowing whether there will be compensation for their clients is declining rapidly. Families are shocked and devastated to learn that although their loved ones have been victims of horrific abuse and neglect, they often have no legal recourse.

Many Illinois nursing homes now are severely and intentionally underinsured. So, when residents suffer injuries or die due to the nursing home’s negligence, abuse, understaffing, or poor care, there is little or no money for the victims or their families to recover.

Another common tactic is nursing homes quickly switching ownership when accountability comes due. This way wrongdoers cannot be held legally accountable, and victims and their families receive no justice for their loss and suffering. The nursing homes usually reopen under a different name.

Many nursing homes in Illinois operate as shell LLCs. The entity that holds the license for the nursing home and is therefore directly legally accountable, often is nothing more than a piece of paper. Typically, the nursing home business itself pays millions in rent to a separate company that owns the building and pays millions more to a separate “management company” that supposedly runs daily operations. On paper, this makes the nursing home appear unprofitable. However, the reality is the same owners control all these entities and are, in fact, making a lot of money.

There is action lawmakers can take to remedy this. It is time to amend the Illinois Nursing Home Care Act. When it was enacted 46 years ago, it was ahead of its time and a model for the nation. It helped provide better care for nursing home residents by encouraging accountability through the legal system. Lawmakers can plug the loopholes and restore the ability for victims to pursue legal accountability by adding some new stipulations to the Act including explicit provisions that hold all those who profit from nursing home operations legally accountable.

Nursing homes must be required to have adequate levels of insurance to operate. You need to show proof of insurance to drive a car in Illinois; it’s incomprehensible that nursing homes can be allowed to operate with no or very little insurance.

Illinois must demand more financial transparency. The state must clamp down on the practice of “real estate camping” where some nursing homeowners use various strategies to obscure or hide the true ownership of their real estate properties and various business entities. This allows them to hide profits and avoid litigation. The state must require full disclosure of beneficial ownership.

Nursing homes cannot be allowed to avoid litigation by switching ownership when lawsuits are filed. They must be accountable for what happened on their watch whether they still own the facility or not.

In the future, Illinois lawmakers must tie increases in state funding for nursing homes to more transparency about how the money will be spent to ensure it is directed toward direct care for patients as intended.

The nursing home industry has powerful lobbyists in Springfield, but the best way for nursing homes to avoid litigation is to provide better care for residents and staff their facilities adequately with trained and supervised employees. It can be done and the nursing homes can still make a profit. In fact, more than six dozen of the 1,200 long-term care facilities in Illinois have earned all five stars, the highest ranking possible for providing good care.

History has shown that lawsuits and litigation can drive significant changes in society and prompt more responsible business practices. That’s why Illinois lawmakers must address current loopholes allowing nursing homes to avoid litigation and financial responsibility.

There is no excuse for Illinois to be among the worst in the nation for nursing home care. However, better care will never be provided unless victims can pursue full accountability.

• Elmhurst resident Margaret Battersby Black, a managing partner at the Chicago-based personal injury law firm Levin & Perconti, is the third vice president of the Illinois Trial Lawyers Association.