Nursing Home Abuse Lawyers in the USA

Awareness is extremely important when it comes to eliminating nursing home abuse and neglect and elder abuse. Calling attention to the existence and prevalence of these issues is crucial and it is also very important for family members to develop an awareness of the signs of abuse, so that cases can be identified and dealt with.

When nursing homes neglect elders and they suffer injury, the injured person or their family will most likely have a claim against the nursing home. Nursing homes have certain duties that they must fulfill to their patients, and whenever a nursing home fails in those duties, there is a basis for a claim.

The growing number of for-profit nursing homes appears to be adding to the problems of waste, fraud and abuse that plague many nursing homes.

Nursing home neglect can lead to bedrail entrapment, serious injury, and death to nursing home residents that are confined to a bed.

When our elderly cannot care for themselves properly due to illness or due to advanced age, they may need to spend their remaining years in nursing homes. We expect them to receive the care they require and treated with dignity and compassion. In actuality, what we want to happen is often far different from what really goes on in many nursing home facilities.

Often, people have not filed a formal nursing home complaint simply because they are unsure how or unaware that they can. A nursing home complaint can be filed when the negligence, misconduct, or abuse of a nursing home facility or caregiver causes you or your loved one to suffer. Filing a complaint should lead to an investigation into the facility.

If you are one of the millions of Americans who has an elderly family member in the care of someone outside the family you likely worry about the quality of their care on a regular basis. Although accurate statistics are difficult to come by because experts believe that a significant percentage of actual abuse and neglect of the elderly goes unreported, estimates are that over two million elderly Americans are abused or neglected every year by caregivers.

For elderly Americans, depression often goes undiagnosed and untreated because many people do not recognize the symptoms. Elderly people are prone to develop depression for a variety of reasons. Anything from chronic back pain to the loss of independence caused by medical conditions can lead to depression or make depression more serious.

After a nursing home fall occurs, the patient should be put on a 72 hour fall watch where there will be a series of thorough assessments to make sure all injuries sustained from the fall are documented and treated appropriately. After the fall, if there are obvious signs of serious injury the nursing home resident should be transferred to an emergency room immediately.

Some recent examples of nursing home horror stories from New York State and beyond are listed here. There are frequent news stories about the terrible conditions and treatment found in some of the nation's nursing home and assisted living facilities. Some recent examples are listed here: