Jeffrey Lee Schlapp

Employed for 14 years in the nursing home administrative industry, I was the vice president of a mid-sized corporately owned chain in Illinois. My experience includes first hand knowledge about the inner workings of nursing home operations and about the corporate ownership “shell games” they often play. To successfully prosecute a nursing home abuse or neglect case, a lawyer also must understand the all-too-common deceitful accounting practices that many members of the industry employ. 

Before Schlapp became a nursing home chain vice president, he was a consultant, a case manager and a social worker in the nursing home industry. That background helped me grasp the problems that families face and the empathy they need and deserve as they pursue legal remedies for nursing home neglect and abuse. 

I know that the patients affected directly by such abuse and neglect are the very people who defended the country’s values and beliefs during World War II, the Korean War and Vietnam. They are veterans, homemakers, retired ironworkers, farmers, bus drivers, cooks, mothers, fathers, grandparents, husbands and wives. All deserve their dignity. Because deficient care in Illinois nursing homes has become so widespread – with complaints involving more than 90 percent of the state’s institutions, by some estimates – the odds of finding adequate care are my wife's suggestion, I made a “rash” decision to attend law school at the "old" age of 40 once I realized it was the only avenue that allowed him to enforce state and federal nursing home regulations. I had become frustrated in my position in the nursing home industry after years of attempts to create affordable, high-quality health care for the elderly ran into roadblocks from those who owned nursing homes. With a dearth of regulatory oversight, I realized that I could best force nursing home facilities and their legitimate owners to change by suing them for neglect and abuse. Only then could I ensure that basic economics would guarantee that elderly persons would receive the quality of care they so deserve.