Wednesday September 19, 2012

Nursing home fined over abuse of elderly patients

NIGHTINGALE Nursing Home and three others including its director were fined a total of S$64,500 (RM161,250) for various offences.

The nursing home in Braddell Road was fined S$15,000 (RM37,500) – in the first case of its kind – for failing to ensure that the care provided to an elderly patient was according to approved standards of nursing practice.

A camera-clock installed by Peh Siew Lay’s son had recorded three staff mistreating the 77-year-old woman.

Two of the Filipinas tossed her onto the bed and another slapped her sometime in 2010.

For breaking the Employment of Foreign Manpower Act, Nightingale was fined another S$11,000 (RM27,500) on 10 charges of illegal deployment of its foreign workers.

Nightingale’s related company, Greenview Nursing Home, was fined S$6,500 (RM16,250) on five similar charges of deploying foreign workers at the stadium while another, Civic Ambulance Services, was fined a total of S$20,000 (RM50,000) for false declaration of salaries in 2008 and 2009.

Nightingale’s director Tan Choo Waoh, 64, was given a total fine of S$12,000 (RM30,000) on 10 charges of requiring workers to work more than the statutory eight hours per day when signing their employment contracts, and failing to pay them for overtime work in June 2010.

District Judge Hamidah Ibrahim said it was “offensive, unacceptable and inexcusable” for the Nightingale employees to treat Peh in that way.

She agreed with the prosecution that there was a need to send a strong message to operators like the licensee that the law would have zero tolerance if elderly patients in their care were treated inappropriately. — The Straits Times / Asia News Network