FAQ > Health Care Fraud FAQs > What is Patient Abuse/Patient Neglect?
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What is Patient Abuse/Patient Neglect?
When we entrust our loved ones to a long term care facility, we expect them to receive the best care possible. Despite the fact that most facilities take care to ensure the safety of their residents, abuse and neglect occur. Patient abuse and neglect are serious crimes. Our most vulnerable citizens are often completely dependent upon the care and services provided by the facilities in which they reside. It is tragic to think that when abuse occurs, these patients find themselves in the care of the same people that are responsible for the abuse.
Ohio Revised Code Section 2903.34 makes it a crime for any person who owns, operates, administers, is employed by, or is an agent of a care facility to abuse or neglect a resident of that facility. The term “care facility” applies to nursing homes, group homes, residential facilities run by the Department of Mental Health or Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities, and long term care units of hospitals.
Ohio Revised Code Section 2903.33 defines “abuse” as “knowingly causing physical harm or recklessly causing serious physical harm to a person by physical contact with the person or by the inappropriate use of physical or chemical restraint, medication, or isolation.” It is a violation of this statute for staff to use a restraint, medication, or isolation as “punishment, for staff convenience, excessively, as a substitute for treatment, or in quantities that preclude habilitation and treatment.” This same statute defines “neglect” as “recklessly failing to provide a person with any treatment, care, goods, or services that is necessary to maintain the health or safety of the person when the failure results in serious physical harm to the person.”
Attorney General Yost has statutory authority to investigate these crimes and he is committed to ensuring the safety of Ohio’s long term care facility residents. If someone you know is a victim of Patient Abuse or Patient Neglect, you should contact the Ohio Attorney General’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit at 614-466-0722, or the Attorney General’s Help Center at 800-282-0515.