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De Caro & Kaplen, LLP can represent patients in cases involving any form of nursing home negligence or abuse in New York, including:
Sadly, elder abuse including physical and sexual abuse has been found in some nursing homes, leading to a nursing home malpractice claim. Untrained staff as well as those who have not had sufficient background checks have been hired by nursing homes. Clues that should alert the nursing home administration to elder abuse are often ignored.
Our nursing home abuse lawyers have been involved where improper staffing has led to patient injury. In one case, there was only one nurse responsible for more patients than it was possible to handle. Due to the lack of trained nurses, it became impossible to render nursing care to all the patients requiring help. In another case of nursing home negligence, responsibility for care was left to unskilled aides and orderlies because the nursing home was trying to save money.
Decubitus ulcers, often called pressure ulcers or bed sores are caused by poor medical and nursing care. Bed sores/pressure ulcers often occur in hospitals and nursing homes because of:
We have found that although bed sore prevention protocols exist in the nursing facility, the nursing home staff and nursing care facility staff often fail to follow them. Often the nursing home staff are inadequately trained or insufficient staff are present to provide proper care.
Proper bed sore prevention techniques and good nursing care will prevent bed sores from developing. By carefully reviewing a patient’s chart and nursing home staffing patterns we have been able to determine that a patient was not turned at proper intervals causing bed sores to develop that went unrecognized and untreated. Often the inadequate care of bed sores causes them to become infected, requiring surgery and months of rehabilitation. We have been able to obtain compensation for pressure sores caused by poor nursing care and nursing home neglect.
Falls often take place because of nursing home negligence. Without proper supervision or assistance, patients may be allowed to get out of bed or walk. Nursing home patients may be forced to leave their beds and go to the bathroom alone because their calls for help have been ignored. Sometimes, patients fall out of bed because proper bed rails or patient restraints were not in place.
In other instances, patients suffering from dementia have wandered out of the nursing home because they were not properly supervised, or the nursing home lacked enough monitoring equipment. We have even been retained where a patient was dropped because of the lack of transfer skills by nursing home staff or because not enough staff was present to ensure a safe transfer. Usually, falls in a nursing home are preventable if proper care and precautions are taken.
Poor attention to a nursing home patient’s nutritional requirements can lead to injury or even death. Improper hydration of the patient, failing to provide the patient enough calories and providing food that a patient cannot tolerate have all been found in cases of nursing home negligence. Cases of patient’s choking because their food was not properly prepared or the failure of the nursing home staff to supervise eating have also been encountered by our New York nursing home malpractice attorneys.
Nursing home patients often sustain hip fractures because of the poor care they have received.
A hip fracture in a nursing home patient is a life changing or life ending event.
A recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) on the long term outcome of nursing home patients sustained a hip fracture [Survival and Functional Outcome After Hip Fracture Among Nursing Home Residents JAMA Intern Med: 2014; 174(8):1273-1280] reported:
36.2% of patients in nursing homes who sustained a hip fracture died within 6 months and 53.5% of patients became dependent within 6 months. The study concluded, “Survival and functional outcomes are poor after hip fracture among nursing home residents, particularly for patients receiving nonoperative management, the oldest old, and patients with multiple comorbidities and advanced cognitive impairment.”
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