October 21st, 2013 by WCBC Radio
A USA TODAY investigation shows that thousands of residents in U.S. nursing homes and other long-term care institutions for the aged and disabled have had their personal savings raided or mismanaged after relying on the facilities to safeguard the money in special trust fund accounts. These trust funds, which most long-term care providers are required to maintain for residents who request that the facility handle their money, are supposed to work like conventional bank accounts, with accrued interest, regular statements and reliable oversight. But according to the USA TODAY report, more than 1,500 recent cases were found in which nursing homes have been cited by state and federal regulators for mishandling the funds. In scores of cases, employees or administrators siphoned huge sums of money from trust accounts — hundreds of thousands of dollars in some instances — for everything from shopping and gambling sprees to routine household expenses. In hundreds more cases, facilities failed to pay interest on the funds, could not account for their holdings, or did not carry adequate insurance to protect the money from loss or theft. Jeff Metz is the administrator at Egle Nursing Home in Lonaconing and he tells WCBC News that the state of Maryland provides a number of safeguards to ensure that resident’s accounts won’t be tampered with….
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