Judge kills nursing home suit

[flashl]

State's failure to draft regulations on staffing means woman's case can't proceed, he says.

Hazel Adams' lawsuit alleging understaffing in numerous Sacramento-area nursing homes got tossed out recently for an odd reason: The state's failure to honor its own law.

A Sacramento Superior Court judge ruled that the state passed a law eight years ago, then ignored a key portion of it, placing courts in an untenable position for evaluating staffing.

Judge Loren E. McMaster blasted state health officials for failing to comply with a mandate that they write regulations relating to minimum-staffing requirements in nursing homes.

Without such a yardstick, he concluded, courts are in no position to determine whether a skilled nursing facility is meeting the law's standard of 3.2 nursing hours per patient day.

"State departments do a grave disservice to the general public when, as here, they fail to comply with statutes directing that they take action," McMaster wrote last month in a ruling similar to that of a Los Angeles appellate court in a separate suit against nearly two dozen nursing homes.

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Let's hope they correct this loophole.