Client Privately Hired A Housekeeper From Her Nursing Home
Tonya Antionette Lloyd
85-year-old Patricia Gipe spent a long year at a nursing home before she was finally discharged to home. In order to be able to stay at home, though, she needed in-home care.
Instead of getting help from professional in-home care agencies in North County, she hired a housekeeper named Tonya Antionette Lloyd who worked at the nursing home to help her at home and run errands for her.
Everything seemed fine for a while, until one day Mrs. Gipe learned that the housekeeper had systematically stolen $150,000 from her bank account,
Police allege that the caregiver used Gipe’s debit card to withdraw money from the bank, make personal purchases and pay for airfare for a vacation to the Bahamas.
The victim’s family fired Lloyd when they found out, but the theft already had left the victim nearly completely broke.
Unethical and Illegal
This is a scenario that we see all too often. Many times elderly patients at hospitals or nursing homes are befriended by caregivers or housekeepers at those facilities, who manipulate those elderly patients and their families into hiring them to provide private care after the patient is discharged.
First of all, when the facility’s employee does that, they are probably violating the federal HIPPA law, which states that using patients’ confidential health information for personal gain is a HIPPA violation. Besides that, it is unethical for the facilities’ employees to take advantage of frail and elderly persons who have been entrusted to them for care in the facility by scheming to get them to hire them privately outside the facility.
Penny-Wise and Pound-Foolish
At first it can seem expensive to get help from professional in-home care agencies, compared to the cost of privately-hiring caregivers on your own like the victim in this case did. However, most people who aren’t in the in-home care business don’t know how to conduct criminal background checks, run reference checks, check on driving records, car registration and insurance, bonding and other concerns when hiring caregivers on their own. They may think that they know how, or that they “get around” to learning how to do it later, but then they don’t do it.
The result can be sad outcomes like the one in this case. The victim has no chance of recovering her money and the result is that almost all of her money is gone with no hope of recovery.
When you are going to trust your safety and security, or that of a loved one, in the hands of a caregiver who you can’t check out on your own, and when you don’t know how to do that in the first place, you should consider whether it isn’t in fact time to use professional in-home care agencies in North County to protect you or your loved one and their assets and physical well-being.
See the newspaper coverage about this case, with additional details.
Related posts:
- Govt announces plan to reduce health disparities – But you’d be better off counting on in-home caregivers in North San Diego County from A Servant’s Heart Care Solutions!
- In-Home Care for Seniors Helps Reduce Risk Of Dangerous Conditions
- Post-discharge Clinics Could Reduce Readmissions to the Hospital in North San Diego County
- Health care penalty: The more affordable choice for Home Care Agencies in San Diego County
- Home Care Caregivers in San Diego County Can Reduce Problems With Seniors’ Finances
