Washington County Nursing Home Found Negligent

Chrissie Cole

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The State Department of Health has been busy investigating several complaints of negligence and wrongful death at the Eden Park Nursing Home in Glen Falls. After a five day trial, a State Supreme Court jury ordered Washington County to pay $300,000 to the family of a woman who died as a result of a fall at the county-owned facility.

The woman, 75, died at the home in March 2003, after falling from the toilet. The family’s attorney claimed the woman’s death was caused by inadequate staffing and improper installation of the toilet seat.

Several wrongful death lawsuits are expected to be filed against the Eden park nursing home as the result of two recent deaths that occurred at the facility.

The spring issue of “The Monitor”, the quarterly publication of the Long Time Care Community Coalition, features an audit report issued earlier this year by the state comptroller’s office on the nursing home complaint system of the state Department of Health.

The audit indicates that the DOH was late in investigating one of every five complaints filed against nursing homes. From April 2005 to September 2006, auditors found that 1,186 of about 6,700 investigations by DOH began late. Although the auditors found that DOH responded promptly to complaints where residents were in immediate danger, it failed to act quickly on other complaints.