Woman sues nursing home over mom’s care

March 4, 2009 at 12:00a.m.

PITTSBURGH (AP) — Social workers lied about the ability of a New Castle, Pa., woman to care for her 91-year-old mother, who was put in a nursing home where she died of substandard care, a lawsuit alleges.

Adele Abraham died of pneumonia and other problems March 3, 2007, at Overlook Medical Clinic in New Wilmington, according to the 74-page lawsuit filed late Monday in U.S. District Court here by Lynda Abraham, 66.

Among the defendants are Overlook, two assessment agencies, doctors and individual caseworkers who worked for the corporate defendants.

“This case involves the unwarranted and unlawful kidnapping of 91-year-old Adele Abraham from her home in order to secure payment for her inpatient care,” the lawsuit contends.

Officials at Ellwood City Hospital, which helped assess Abraham, said Tuesday they were unfamiliar with the case and could not comment.

The Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Pittsburgh, which also had a role in the case through a New Castle-based affiliate named Challenges: Options in Aging, declined to comment. Officials at Overlook also did not return a call for comment.

The lawsuit said Lynda Abraham contacted Ellwood City Hospital’s Home Health Agency to help care for her mother in April 2006. Instead of helping, the lawsuit alleges, Ellwood Home Health “immediately began to pressure her to place her mother, Adele, in 24-hour care at Ellwood Behavioral Health.”

When Lynda Abraham wouldn’t agree to that, she claims, home health workers made up a story that Adele Abraham was found with dried feces on herself because of inadequate care at home. That led a Lawrence County judge to appoint a Challenges worker as guardian of Adele, and she was involuntarily committed to the hospital’s health unit.

Adele Abraham later was transferred to Overlook. There, she later developed pneumonia, was repeatedly given aspirin and an arthritis medication that she was allergic to, and otherwise was poorly cared for and not properly fed, the lawsuit contends.

The lawsuit contends that nursing-home workers lost the woman’s dentures three times in six weeks and didn’t replace them within a reasonable time, though the lawsuit doesn’t specify how long.