Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan has called on state public health officials to overhaul their approach to protecting seniors and disabled adults who live in nursing homes alongside mentally ill felons.

In a blistering letter to the director of the Illinois Department of Public Health, Madigan demanded beefed-up inspections and better data-keeping of criminal activity inside the homes. And she said the department must enlist the help of state police to immediately review the criminal history of every felon living in Illinois nursing homes.

In Illinois, law enforcement and the nursing home industry have failed to adequately manage the influx of younger, mentally ill offenders. The state’s background checks, designed to identify dangerous residents so they can be properly monitored, often fell short by missing ex-convicts’ violent crimes and downplaying their risks to others.

Countless audits and reprots have “exposed shocking and unconscionable gaps in (the public health department’s) implementation of the law and a disregard for its role as chief regulator of Illinois’ nursing homes,” Madigan wrote in the letter to department director Damon T. Arnold.

Madigan’s office has no direct authority to mandate changes in other state agencies. But her voice is crucial because as the state’s top law enforcement official, she has investigated substandard nursing homes and pressed for the 2006 state law requiring criminal background screenings for all new admissions.

Madigan said health inspectors and state police should quickly launch a series of unannounced visits to troubled facilities, including those housing dangerous mentally ill offenders. The health department, which is principally responsible for inspecting nursing homes and ensuring resident safety, should halt the operations of facilities that fail to comply with patient protection laws, she said.

Separately, Gov. Pat Quinn’s office announced that his new Nursing Home Safety Task Force will hold its first meeting Thursday at the downtown Thompson Center and simultaneously at the Capitol in Springfield.

The task force, which also was formed in response to a Chicago Tribune series, includes the health department and other state agencies responsible for nursing-home safety.

But Madigan said state health officials shouldn’t wait to adopt reforms. “A task force should not be needed … to require (the health department) to comply with and enforce the laws that are designed to protect nursing home residents,” she wrote. “Until (the health department) fulfills its statutory responsibility to aggressively regulate these facilities, residents will remain at risk.”

The health department defended its safety record, saying in a written statement that it “regulates long-term care facilities to the fullest extent permitted by current state law.”

But department officials said they would support “stricter laws and resources to aid in better regulating the long-term care system and will continue to work with all state agencies and the Nursing Home Safety Task Force.”

The Tribune series detailed cases in which elderly and disabled nursing home residents were allegedly assaulted, raped and even murdered by mentally ill criminals who also lived in the facilities.

More than any other state, Illinois relies on nursing homes to house mentally ill patients, including younger adults with criminal records who cycle into the facilities from jail cells, psychiatric wards and homeless shelters. Younger felons qualify for nursing homes if they have a mental illness or physical disability.

People with a primary diagnosis of mental illness now comprise more than 15 percent of the state’s 92,225 nursing home population, the Tribune found. Those with felony convictions now total 3,000, including 82 convicted murderers, 179 sex offenders and 185 armed robbers.

The state’s incomplete and often misleading criminal background checks have been performed under contracts worth $1 million a year by companies with ties to the health department, the Tribune reported.

Madigan’s letter demanded that the health department perform a top-to-bottom audit of those assessment contracts. “The criminal history analysis and reports are untimely and incomplete and, as a result, are putting residents at risk,” she wrote.

Steven Peck

About the Author

Attorney Steven Peck has been practicing law since 1981. A former successful business owner, Mr. Peck initially focused his legal career on business law. Within the first three years, after some colleagues and friend’s parents endured nursing home neglect and elder abuse, he continued his education to begin practicing elder law and nursing home abuse law.