ELDER ABUSE AND NEGLECT
Common Examples of Elder Abuse and Neglect
Decubitus ulcers, also commonly referred to as bedsores or pressure ulcers, are lesions that impact the integrity of the skin – a medical issue commonly caused by skin breakdown due to a lack of proper care. Bedsores are caused by many care-related factors, including, but not limited to: unrelieved pressure, friction, shearing forces, temperature, age, incontinence and improper nourishment, hydration and/or medication. Although easily prevented and completely treatable if found early, bedsores can be fatal to an older person, even under the auspices of medical care.
An elder care facility breaches its duty of care owed to a resident if it fails to prevent and treat bedsores by not following generally accepted medical practices regarding skin care. For example, an elder care facility can be liable for damages if it fails to regularly rotate a bed-ridden resident, or if it fails to utilize a pressure relieving mattress to prevent the increase in size or depth of an already known existing bedsore. Improperly treated bedsores can lead to severe medical complication, including infection and/or death. If someone you love has suffered unnecessarily from a serious bed sore while under the care of a negligent nursing staff, contact a pressure ulcers lawyer at our firm today to discuss the details of your case.
Our attorneys have a complete understanding of the causal factors of bedsores as well as the duty of care that facilities owe to you or a loved one in preventing and treating bedsores. The bed sores attorneys at our firm have represented many clients in litigating elder neglect cases stemming from the development and progression of bedsores, and are proud to have aggressively advocated for each and every client, thereby successfully obtaining the best possible results given the facility’s failure to prevent and/or treat such bedsores.
If you or a loved one suffered or suffers from bedsores, we can offer the experience and skill necessary to provide you with sound advice on what your rights may be under existing California law.
Falls and accidents are a serious concern for almost all care facility residents. Approximately 50 percent of residents fall annually and 10 percent of these falls result in serious injury, particularly hip fractures.
Nursing homes and other types of care facilities must examine risk factors which cause falls and accidents and take these steps to limit the risks:
- Keep the resident environment as free of accident hazards as possible
- Give each resident adequate supervision to prevent accidents
- Use assistive devices to help improve resident safety
- If a resident has fallen or been injured or is considered to be at risk, his or her care plan must individually address this concern and identify steps that will be taken to improve safety.
Our attorneys have a complete understanding of the duty of care which nursing home and other rehabilitative or care facilities owe to you or a loved one in preventing fall incidents.
If you believe a care facility did not properly protect against the risk of fall or plan or execute a fall-prevention plan for yourself or a loved one, please contact our office to discuss your legal options.
In residents with dementia, wandering is a common behavior that causes great risk to the resident. Although it occurs with several types of dementia, wandering is especially problematic in persons with Alzheimer’s disease. This is because Alzheimer’s disease frequently produces impaired memory, and persons with impaired memory are likely to become disoriented and lost simply because they do not recognize where they are or do not remember how they came to be there.
Caring for nursing home residents or patients at skilled nursing facilities with Alzheimer’s disease or other forms of dementia must be comprehensive. Each care facility must not only meet its residents’ personal and medical needs, but must also have a protocol in place to prevent its residents from wandering unsafely throughout its facility, or off the property where they can face many dangers of being in an unfamiliar environment in which they are not mentally able to protect themselves.
When nursing homes and other care facilities fail to prevent their residents from wandering unsafely throughout the facility or even off property, the care facility may be held legally accountable for any resulting injury, or even death, which can occur. If you or a loved one experienced a wandering incident, you may be entitled to compensation for any injury or death which occurred as a result of the facility’s negligence in failing to prevent the wandering.
Our attorneys and professional staff are experienced with handling wandering cases and have the skill necessary to provide you with sound advice on what your rights may be under the law.
Nursing homes, elder facilities and other types of resident and skilled care facilities must provide each resident with a nourishing, palatable and well-balanced diet that meets daily nutritional and special dietary needs. Additionally, care facilities must:
- Serve at least three meals daily, at regular times, within not more than a 14-hour span between the evening meal and breakfast
- Offer snacks at bedtime
- Reasonably accommodate resident food and mealtime preferences
- Offer a food substitute of similar nutritional value if a resident refuses food
- Serve food attractively, at the proper temperature, and in a form to meet individual needs
- Prepare and follow menus that meet national dietary standards
- Plan menus with consideration of the residents’ cultural backgrounds and food habits
- Post the current and following week’s menus for regular and special diets
- Prepare food using methods that conserve nutritive value, flavor, and appearance
- Provide therapeutic diets to residents with nutritional problems, subject to physician orders
- Ensure that a resident’s ability to eat does not diminish unless it is medically unavoidable
- Provide individualized help to residents who need assistance with meals, offering enough assistance so that residents can finish meals
- Provide special eating utensils to residents who need them
- Provide table service to all residents who desire it, served at tables of appropriate height
- Store, prepare, distribute, and serve food under sanitary conditions
If a resident’s ability to eat is compromised, the facility should establish an individualized care plan to maintain the resident’s ability to eat food orally. For example, therapeutic programs can be used to help improve a resident’s ability to swallow or to help a confused resident maintain a fixed eating routine.
Nursing homes must notify a resident’s physician immediately if there are signs of malnutrition, such as a weight loss of 5 pounds or more within a 30 day period. Federal guidelines urge care facilities to reassess nutritional status whenever a resident experiences unplanned or undesired weight loss of 5 percent or more in one month, 7.5 percent or more in three months, or 10 percent or more in 6 months.
We have a complete understanding of the duty of care that facilities have to you or a loved one in preventing and treating malnutrition. Or legal team has aggressively litigated many cases against nursing homes and other types of care facilities throughout California who have failed to prevent and treat malnutrition in its residents.
Dehydration
Care facility residents can become dehydrated when they are not given sufficient fluids. Symptoms of dehydration include dizziness, confusion, constipation, fever, decreased urine output, and skin problems. Severe dehydration can lead to serious illness or even death.
It is the responsibility of care facilities to provide each resident with sufficient fluids to maintain proper hydration and health. Each resident should be provided a plentiful supply of fresh water or other beverages and be given any help or encouragement needed to drink.
We have represented many nursing home and care facility residents throughout the State of California that suffered either malnutrition or dehydration as a result of a care facility’s misconduct. We aggressively advocate for each and every client, successfully obtaining the best possible results where a facility has failed to prevent the malnutrition and/or dehydration of your loved one.
If you or a loved one has suffered or suffers from Malnutrition or dehydration, we offer the experience and skill necessary to provide you with sound advice on what your rights may be under the law.
Infection in nursing home and care facility residents is, unfortunately, an all-too common occurrence. In many cases, infection is preventable, and, even when an infection is unavoidable the infection can remain in-check and the resident can recover quickly with proper medical treatment.
When an infection goes unaddressed, the body attempts to remove the infection and initiate the healing process through a process called inflammation. Inflammation causes redness, swelling, pain, tenderness, heat, and disturbed function of the infected area of the body. When the degree of infection gets severe, the infection will spread to the body’s blood system and an inflammatory response will occur throughout the body’s blood system. When inflammation occurs in the body’s blood system, the condition is known as sepsis. If sepsis becomes severe enough where blood can no longer deliver oxygen and nutrients to the body’s organs, septic shock will set in and cause multiple organ failure and death.
Care facilities must establish and maintain an effective infection control program that is designed to provide a safe, sanitary, and comfortable environment for their residents and help prevent the development and transmission of disease and infection. Nursing home and elder care facilities must also be designed, constructed, equipped, and maintained in a manner to protect the health and safety of residents, personnel, and the general public.
When a nursing home or care facility fails to properly execute an effective infection control program, its residents and patients are prone to suffer infections which can lead to serious illness and even death. Our knowledgeable attorneys and professional legal staff have a complete understanding not only of the laws governing unaddressed infections and sepsis, but of all laws and regulations involved in litigating cases against elder care facilities and nursing homes. We have represented many clients throughout California in their elder care facility litigation cases, successfully obtaining the best possible results for unaddressed infections and sepsis incidents.
If you or a loved one suffers from an unaddressed infection or sepsis, we offer the experience and skill necessary to provide you with sound advice on what your rights may be under the law.
Infection in nursing home and care facility residents is, unfortunately, an all-too common occurrence. In many cases, infection is preventable, and, even when an infection is unavoidable the infection can remain in-check and the resident can recover quickly with proper medical treatment.
When an infection goes unaddressed, the body attempts to remove the infection and initiate the healing process through a process called inflammation. Inflammation causes redness, swelling, pain, tenderness, heat, and disturbed function of the infected area of the body. When the degree of infection gets severe, the infection will spread to the body’s blood system and an inflammatory response will occur throughout the body’s blood system. When inflammation occurs in the body’s blood system, the condition is known as sepsis. If sepsis becomes severe enough where blood can no longer deliver oxygen and nutrients to the body’s organs, septic shock will set in and cause multiple organ failure and death.
Care facilities must establish and maintain an effective infection control program that is designed to provide a safe, sanitary, and comfortable environment for their residents and help prevent the development and transmission of disease and infection. Nursing home and elder care facilities must also be designed, constructed, equipped, and maintained in a manner to protect the health and safety of residents, personnel, and the general public.
When a nursing home or care facility fails to properly execute an effective infection control program, its residents and patients are prone to suffer infections which can lead to serious illness and even death. Our knowledgeable attorneys and professional legal staff have a complete understanding not only of the laws governing unaddressed infections and sepsis, but of all laws and regulations involved in litigating cases against elder care facilities and nursing homes. We have represented many clients throughout California in their elder care facility litigation cases, successfully obtaining the best possible results for unaddressed infections and sepsis incidents.
If you or a loved one suffers from an unaddressed infection or sepsis, we offer the experience and skill necessary to provide you with sound advice on what your rights may be under the law.
Failure to Provide Medications
Most elderly individuals depend on a regimen of medicines to maintain their health and treat other age related illnesses. To the extent that such elderly persons fail to receive all of the medications they need, significant harm or even death can result.
While it seems basic that a skilled nursing facility or residential care facility who undertakes the responsibilities of ensuring that their elderly residents will receive all of their physician prescribed medications as ordered and needed, such is not always the case. Unfortunately, our firm has seen many cases where facility residents have failed to receive their medications, for prolonged periods of time, and have suffered significant debilitating injuries and even death as a result of such failures. In such circumstances, liability against those charged with the responsibilities to provide such medications would exist.
Laws governing the proper administration of medication at nursing homes, residential care facilities for the elderly, and other care facilities exist to ensure that residents of care facilities properly receive their medications. Our attorneys have a complete understanding of the laws governing the provision of medications as well as the rights of residents to receive all of the medication they need on time. This includes an understanding of the laws and regulations involved in litigating claims against the different type of elder care facilities that exist.
Failure to Monitor Medications
Most nursing home and elder care facility residents depend on medicines to treat the illness they suffer from as well as to maintain their health. In California, any facilities that provide custodial care for elderly or dependent adult patients or residents are allowed to provide routine physician ordered medications and/or emergency medications to their residents.
The laws governing the proper administration of medication at nursing homes and residential care facilities for the elderly are different depending on the type of facility involved but as a basic rule, every facility must have in place for each resident a drug regimen that must be reviewed at least once a month by a licensed pharmacist. The pharmacist must report any irregularities to the attending physician and the director of nursing, and these reports must be acted upon. More over, in order to ensure that medications are administered safely, California law requires all nursing homes, care facilities and physicians to properly order, record, store, administer, and monitor medications for each patient or resident. Yet despite strict standards governing the control and administration of medications, medication problems, such as failure to monitor medications, are common. Our attorneys have handled numerous cases involving the failure of different facilities to properly monitor a resident’s physician ordered medications.
If a care facility has failed to properly monitor or provide you or a loved one with medications that has resulted in serious injury and/or death, we offer the experience and skill necessary to provide you with sound advice on what your rights may be under the law.
A feeding tube is a medical device used to provide nutrition to patients who cannot obtain adequate nutrition by swallowing. Placement of a feeding tube may be temporary for the treatment of acute conditions or lifelong in the case of chronic disabilities.
Feeding tubes can only be used as a last resort because they lead to a loss of functioning, and can cause serious medical and psychological problems. If a resident is able to swallow and can get adequate nutrition by eating, no matter how long it takes, then no tube should be used. Lack of staff available to assist a resident with regular eating is not an acceptable excuse to install a feeding tube.
With the resident’s consent, a feeding tube can be used if there is a demonstrated medical need to prevent malnutrition or dehydration. Residents fed by tube must receive the appropriate medical treatment and services to prevent aspiration pneumonia, diarrhea, vomiting, dehydration, and other adverse symptoms.
If a feeding tube is being used, the nursing home or care facility must do what it can to help the resident take food by mouth again as soon as possible in order to avoid the long-term use of a feeding tube, which often leads to serious complications.
Residents of elder care facilities are, for the most part, dependent on others for basic necessities such as food, shelter, and medical treatment. Not having all or some of those basic needs met can be harmful or dangerous to a resident. Therefore, failure to provide services, such as food, treatment, clothing, shelter, supervision, or medical services, which are necessary or essential to the health and well-being of a resident, constitutes lack of proper care for that individual, which is considered to be a form of elder abuse.
Proper care is not only essential to maintain the physical well-being of a nursing home or care facility resident, it is also vital to keep a resident’s mental health in balance. If a care facility resident feels that his or her basic needs are not being met, he or she can become depressed, withdrawn, or even feel abandoned, which can lead to a rapid decline in his or her overall health.
When a nursing home or care facility fails to properly care for its residents, to whom they owe a contractual and legal duty to provide basic needs, they can be held legally accountable. Our team of experienced attorneys and professional legal staff has a complete understanding not only of the laws governing proper care, but of all laws and regulations involved in litigating elder care facility cases.
We have represented many care facility residents and their families throughout California in their nursing home and care facility litigation cases, and is proud to have aggressively advocated for each and every client, successfully obtaining the best possible results for a facility’s failure to provide proper care.
Elder Abuse
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We offer a FREE initial consultation with our CA elder abuse attorneys. We offer evening and weekend appointments and can come to your home if you cannot make it to our California office. We work on a contingency fee basis, meaning you pay nothing unless we recover for you.
