A bill sponsored by an East Cobb legislator to increase protections for residents of senior care homes and require stronger training measures for employees at those facilities easily passed the Georgia House on Friday.
HB 987, introduced last week by State Rep. Sharon Cooper (R-East Cobb), passed by a vote of 160-1 and will now go to the Senate.
You can read the bill here. Cooper, a retired nurse, is the chairwoman of the House Health and Human Services Committee.
Her bill increases safety regulations for nursing homes and other senior care facilities, and raises maximum penalties for abuse and neglect cases.
Under HB 987, senior care facilities with memory care services must be certified. They also must make more detailed financial reports and provide more training for caregiving staff and administrators.
The bill was heavily pressed by senior advocates, including the Alzheimer’s Association of Georgia, following an investigative series by the AJC about injuries and deaths of senior-care residents due to abuse and neglect.
One of those deaths took place August 2017, when Adam Bennett, a 91-year-old resident at the Sunrise at East Cobb facility on Johnson Ferry Road, was found badly injured in his room. He later died at WellStar Kennestone Hospital due to what the Cobb Medical Examiner’s Office concluded was blunt force trauma.
Landon Terrel, a caregiver at Sunrise, was charged with elder abuse and also was tried for murder. A mistrial was declared on the murder charge, but he was sentenced to serve five years in prison and five on probation for elder neglect.
During the trial, some of Terrel’s coworkers testified he had been the subject of complaints from other residents and the court heard he had been fired from other caregiving jobs for neglecting patients.
Bennett’s family has sued Sunrise Senior Living, which operates more than 300 senior facilities in the U.S., Canada and the United Kingdom.
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