FORMER NURSING HOME EMPLOYEE FOUND GUILTY OF ABUSING A VULNERABLE ADULT

Maryland Attorney General J. Joseph Curran, Jr. announced today Isiwatu Paye, a former employee of Genesis Health Care, Heritage Center was found guilty of abuse of a vulnerable adult arising out of an assault on a nursing home resident. Baltimore County District Court Judge Robert J. Steinberg sentenced Paye, 24, of Maidstone Court in Rosedale to thirty days in jail. Judge Steinberg also placed Paye on two years supervised probation and ordered that she not provide direct hands on care to vulnerable adults for a period of two years.

On July 14, 2005, Paye was a certified nursing assistant providing hands on care to a resident at Heritage Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, located in Dundalk. The resident was 74 years old, suffered from end stage Alzheimer’s disease, had a feeding tube, and could not even turn herself over in bed. While Paye and another nursing assistant were assisting the resident with changing her diaper, the resident began to scratch herself. Paye yelled at the resident and slapped the resident on the hands and across the face. The slap across the face was with such force that the other nursing assistant in the room could hear the slap, and the victim screamed out in pain.

This case was prosecuted by Attorney General Curran’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit, which has authority to prosecute abuse and neglect of vulnerable adults in facilities that receive Medicaid funds.