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Nursing Home Dehydration: Illinois Nursing Home Evacuated During Heat Wave

December 24, 2014 Blog Post by Barry G. Doyle

The Sheltering Oak nursing home in Lake Island, Illinois was evacuated due to the extreme heat. The facility had no air conditioning. 56 residents were forced to leave the facility. They were either transferred to another nursing home or sent to live with family members.

According to Sheltering Oak nursing home president Leonard Pesz “We tried everything in our power to keep the residents comfortable until Mother Nature made that impossible.” According to a Northwest Herald article, 24 individual air-conditioning units were purchased before health officials evacuated the nursing home.

Sheltering Oak is paid $104.51 per month for each Medicaid resident at the facility. There were 56 residents who were evacuated. That’s over $180,000 each month in income, and over $2 million each year. And yet, the facility had no central air conditioning and only purchased individual units in an effort to stave off being evacuated.

Lake Island, Illinois, like most of the midwest, is enduring a heat wave that has been shattering temperature records. Reports haven’t identified what the temperature reached inside the home to prompt the evacuation, but I can imagine it was sweltering.

Nursing home dehydration is a lesser-known but extremely deadly form of nursing home neglect. By keeping their residents in these inhumane conditions, they were in dire and life-threatening jeopardy.

We’ve followed a few stories recently about the state of emergency preparedness in nursing homes in Illinois and across the country. Recent studies have shown that very few are adequately prepared for likely natural disasters. This was not a flood, however, that struck without warning. This was a predicted meteorological event that left plenty of time to prepare, and yet the administration of Sheltering Oak chose to blame “Mother Nature” rather than take responsibility for ensuring that their residents didn’t suffer under their care.

If you have a loved one who has been subjected to nursing home neglect, contact my law offices for a free and confidential evaluation of your case. At my law offices we never charge a fee unless we take, and win, your case.

Thank you for reading.

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Practice Areas

  • Nursing Home Abuse and Neglect
  • Nursing Home Falls
  • Bed Sores / Pressure Ulcers
  • Medication Errors
  • Dehydration and Malnutrition
  • Wrongful Death

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