Articles Tagged with Nursing Home Negligence

Nursing home staffs have a duty to care for their vulnerable patients, and cases of negligence are a breach of that duty. Families who find themselves in this position must move swiftly because the law imposes strict deadlines for action. The law may, however, delay these deadlines if the patient’s family neither knew nor should have known about the misconduct, which was a key factor in a patient’s family’s recent victory before the Louisiana Court of Appeal.

Delvin Hume’s family placed him in the Ferncrest Manor Living Center in 2009 for a one-month stay while his wife underwent and recovered from eye surgery. Within less than a week, the patient allegedly fell from his bed and missed his diabetes medication because the nursing home staff erroneously refused to administer it.

When you’ve been injured by the negligent actions, or inaction, of others, you likely have a lot of things on your mind. If your injuries are the result of negligence committed by a health care provider, it is very important to understand exactly what requirements the law imposes on you in order to sue that provider. In some cases, you may have to appear before a review panel before you can sue in court. Failing to follow this step can lead to the dismissal of your case, as happened to one Lafayette-area woman, whose unfavorable ruling was recently affirmed by the Louisiana Court of Appeal.

In this recent case, Veronica Thomas, a woman confined to a wheelchair, was being transported from a hospital to a nursing home in Lafayette. An employee of the nursing home drove the van that carried the patient. According to Thomas, she was injured during that trip when she fell backwards.

Nursing homes are tasked with a great responsibility: the care and treatment of those who can least care for themselves, usually the disabled or the elderly. While most facilities undertake this task with the utmost care, some fall short of providing even a basic level of care. That is what two juries, one in Florida and one in West Virginia, concluded as they handed down massive damages awards against nursing homes whose negligent care hastened the deaths of a pair of patients.

In Charleston, West Virginia, Dorothy Douglas stayed at the Heartland of Charleston nursing home for three weeks in 2009. By the time Douglas’s son moved her to another nursing home, she had lost 15 pounds and was near death from dehydration. She passed away shortly thereafter.

Lawyers for Douglas’s son argued at trial that the facility prioritized maximizing patient numbers while minimizing the number of staff, which led to the negligent level of care that ultimately killed Dorothy. A Kanawha County jury agreed, and handed down a $91.5 million judgment. Of that amount, $80 million constituted punitive damages. Earlier this year, a Kanawha County judge rejected the nursing home’s request for a new trial.

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It is common for nursing homes to take steps to shield themselves from litigation involving the care of their residents. There are currently heated arguments concerning the courts’ willingness to honor “arbitration clauses” in residents’ contracts. “Arbitration clauses” are often included in the living agreements signed when someone becomes a resident of a nursing home. They basically state that claims against the home will not be solved through the courts, but will instead be handled by an outside, professional arbitrator that the nursing home hires. The US Supreme Court recently decided not to hear an appeal concerning an elder abuse case wherein a lower court ordered a home to pay damages to the residents, despite the fact that the resident signed a contract with an “arbitration clause”.

While “arbitration clauses” are generally taken into consideration, they can be treated with suspicion, due to the fact that an arbitrator may be biased towards the institution (in this case, the nursing home) that hires him and may want to hire him again in the future. In Beverly Enterprises, Inc. vs. Ping, there may have been negligence so severe that it resulted in a resident’s death. The resident’s estate would potentially have the right to file a “wrongful death” suit against the nursing home, citing egregious actions or abuse that led to the patient’s death

According to the National Center of Health Statistics there are over 1.5 million people in nursing homes in the United States. The estimate of understaffed nursing homes is approximately 90% according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. There are over 20,000 complaints of abuse, gross neglect and exploitation.

In September 2011, a man was admitted to a local nursing home and was experiencing medical conditions that were potentially life threatening. The nursing home held itself out as a properly staffed, skilled, qualified nursing home and a Medicare/Medicaid Provider.