Nursing Home Abuse

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Nursing home abuse, neglect, or harm is a national crisis. Loved ones are injured daily because nursing homes are understaffed and staffs are inadequately trained. When the time arrives for your family member to reside in a nursing facility, you do not want to worry about that facility’s staffing, competency, or safety. Unfortunately, family members must become watchdogs to protect their elderly parents or relatives.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has found that staffing levels in nursing facilities can impact residents' quality of care. CMS regulations require nursing facilities that receive Medicaid and Medicare payments must provide sufficient licensed nursing services 24 hours a day, including a registered nurse for at least 8 consecutive hours every day.

The Hartley Law Group, like CMS, is deeply concerned about staffing inadequacies at nursing homes because nurse staffing has the greatest impact on the quality of care delivered. As CMS has found – lower staffing levels in nursing homes means more hospitalizations, more infections, more pressure ulcers, more skin trauma, more weight loss, increased resistance to care, and decreased functional status.

Federal regulations for long-term care facilities requires sufficient nursing staff; appropriate competencies and skill sets; nursing services that assure resident safety; and the attaining and maintaining of the highest practicable resident well-being.

You can compare nursing homes in your area by going to the Medicare site for nursing home information and entering your zip code. Various nursing home facilities are evaluated by the federal government and give you a meaning way to decide which nursing home is best for your loved one. https://www.medicare.gov/care-compare/

Unfortunately, greed controls many decisions and outcomes in privately owned nursing homes. These nursing home owners and operators put profits ahead of the safety.

The White House FACT SHEET reports that recent research has found that outcomes are significantly worse at privately equity-owned nursing homes:

• residents are more likely to have preventable emergency department visits
• residents are more likely to experience preventable hospitalizations
• residents experience an increased excess rate of death
• residents are more likely to receive antipsychotic drug treatment
• residents’ infection rates and death rates are above statewide averages

The White House. FACT SHEET: Protecting Seniors by Improving Safety and Quality of Care in the Nation’s Nursing Homes. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/02/28/fact-sheet-protecting-seniors-and-people-with-disabilities-by-improving-safety-and-quality-of-care-in-the-nations-nursing-homes/

If your loved one has suffered any of the following injuries, abuse, or harms listed below contact our caring lawyers at Hartley Law Group: Bedsores and Pressure Sores, Negligently-induced infections and sepsis, Fractured and Broken bones, Malnutrition & Dehydration, Sexual Abuse, Medication Overdose, Injuries due to Wandering off, Clogged breathing tubes, Choking, Falls or Death.