An Illinois man claims he was forced to have part of his leg amputated and is “deathly ill” after receiving negligent care at a nursing home already under state scrutiny.
Patch.com reports that John Eric Rush has filed a lawsuit against Hillcrest Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Joliet, Ill., for providing him with negligent care that caused his health condition to deteriorate quickly while he lived there.
Hillcrest Nursing and Rehabilitation Center has already lost Medicare and Medicaid funding because both state and federal governments have determined that it was unable to provide a minimum standard of care for its residents. The facility also recently received a fine in excess of $30,000 from the Illinois Health Dept. and an investigation also revealed that at least 23 reports of mental, physical, and sexual abuse toward residents were filed in a five-month period during 2011, according to the Patch.com report.
Rush filed a lawsuit at the end of February against Hillcrest Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Cook County Circuit Court. The lawsuit was filed alongside his sister-in-law, who holds power-of-attorney over him.
The complaint against the troubled nursing home details the negligent care he received and the extent of the injuries that have resulted from it. When he was moved to Hillcrest Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in 2010, Rush was partially paralyzed due to several strokes. He was unable to talk but could walk with the aid of a walker and supervision.
Over the next year, the care he received was clearly substandard and his condition reflected that. Rush developed numerous bed sores and eventually a pressure sore on his left heel developed. That sore worsened and eventually got infected. That forced Rush into having a partial amputation on his left leg and has him dealing with life-threatening illness to date.
Rush, just 49 years old, has since moved from Hillcrest Nursing and Rehabilitation Center but his injuries and current state will forever serve as a reminder of his stay there. His sister-in-law told Patch that when he entered the nursing home after suffering the strokes, the paralysis affected his right side but the injuries that caused him to file the lawsuit and leave the nursing home were on his left side.
An attorney representing the victim says that the nursing home bears the responsibility of preventing these injuries and it failed to do so. He said that Rush should have been moved regularly to prevent bed sores but he wasn’t and that the sore on his heel should have never worsened to the point that it would become infected had he been given competent care.
