Team 4: Nursing Home Charts Patient In Bathroom After DeathScottdale Manor Takes Corrective Measures After Daughter ComplainsPOSTED: 6:06 pm EST November 25,
2009 SCOTTDALE, Pa. -- A follow-up to a Team 4 investigation into nursing homes finds allegations that medical records were altered -- even forged -- at a home in Westmoreland County.Team 4 investigative reporter Paul Van Osdol reported that 77-year-old Gene Cable checked into Scottdale Manor last November. Just six days later, he was dead.Cable's daughter, Rita Wilson, wanted to find out what happened, so she requested his medical records. When she got them, she was shocked.After Cable died, one of the first documents to catch the eye of his daughter was a Medicaid reimbursement form with what appears to be her signature."This was a document you were supposed to sign?" Van Osdol asked."Yes," Wilson said."You never did?" Van Osdol asked."No. I swear to God. I didn't sign that," Wilson said.Wilson said she also saw a nurse's notes showing that her father supposedly went to the bathroom "when he was dead. And he was continent. That means he physically got up and went to the bathroom when he was dead."Wilson complained to the administrator of Scottdale Manor Rehabilitation Center. She says administrator Brian Bazylak told her they took disciplinary action against the employee who allegedly forged her name and the employee who entered the inaccurate nursing notes."We took measures to correct" Wilson's complaints, Bazylak told Team 4.Attorney Peter Giglione, who has sued numerous nursing homes, says he is not surprised by what happened to Wilson."We've had a couple cases tried here in Allegheny County where we've had staff members charting on our client after they're dead," Giglione said."This shouldn't happen to anybody -- not just because it's my dad. It shouldn't happen to anybody," Wilson said.An investigation by the Pennsylvania Department of Health found Scottdale Manor was not responsible for Cable's death.
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