Illinois Nursing Home Neglect Lawsuit Filed After Resident Found Dead Outside Facility

The family of a woman who was found dead outside of her Illinois nursing home last week, has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the facility alleging that negligent care and supervision caused the tragedy.

The nursing home neglect lawsuit was filed by the three daughters of Sarah Wentworth, who was 89 years old when she died on February 5, 2009 at The Arbor of Itasca in Illinois.

She was found frozen to death in the courtyard of the Illinois nursing home at 5:30 a.m. after being outside for at least 90 minutes wearing only a nightgown.

Wentworth had suffered from dementia for 10 years and wore ankle bracelets which were designed so that the nursing home staff could keep track of her movements. When she passed through door of the nursing home, the bracelets should have triggered an alarm at the nurse’s station.

According to the Chicago Tribune, Wentworth’s daughters said that her physical condition would have prevented her from wandering outside of the home alone and they question how she could have left without any staff knowing.

Under Medicare’s new nursing home rating system, which assigns one to five stars to each facility based on quality of care, health inspections and staffing levels, Arbor of Itasca only received one star. This is the lowest possible rating, meaning that the facility is “much below average.”

The quality measures include information from inspections and surveys over the past three years, including how well a nursing home responds to a resident’s declining mobility, high risk nursing home bed sores, catheter problems, urinary tract infections and pain. It also takes into account whether a facility uses excessive nursing home restraints.

Wandering from a long-term care facility, which is also referred to as nursing home elopement, is a problem in many locations and can result in serious injuries like fractures from falls, heat stroke or hypothermia in extreme weather conditions.

In many cases, simple steps can be taken to eliminate the risk of these nursing home injuries with proper training for staff, moving high risk patients near the nurse’s station, using door alarms, security cameras and guards and locking the sections that house residents that may be prone to wander.

Itasca Police said are continuing their investigation into the death, and no charges have been filed to date.