Nadrich Accident Injury Lawyers has the knowledge and resources to fight for patients who have suffered from poor treatment at nursing homes and hospitals.
Medical advances, health research and a growing population have helped to create a tremendous increase in our elderly population. This continued growth has put a strain on the assisted living and nursing home industry. Like any other industry, nursing homes are motivated by profit, and many times this leads to neglect and/or abuse of their residents.
Our nursing home abuse lawyers have decades of experience fighting for elder abuse victims and their families. We have a team of investigators, nurses, doctors, paralegals and lawyers to assist victims and their families and move forward with a nursing home abuse lawsuit.
We don’t charge our clients any fee until and unless we obtain financial compensation for them. The only fee we charge is a percentage of any compensation we recover for our clients.
Call us today, or text us from this page, if you or a loved one are a victim of nursing home abuse. We have been handling nursing home abuse lawsuits since 1990. We have the experience and know-how to obtain the maximum compensation possible for you.
Types Of Elder Abuse And Neglect Claims We Handle
- Bed sores
- Falls & bone fractures
- Medication errors
- Wrongful death
- Malnutrition
- Aspiration pneumonia
- Sepsis
- Sexual abuse
- Choking
- Violation of rights
- Delayed diagnosis
- Physical elder abuse
- Wandering
- Action against skilled nursing facilities
- Residential care facilities and assisted living facilities
- Action against insurance companies & financial advisors
- Dehydration
- Hospitals
- Fraud, mishandling finance and unfair business practices
- Home health agencies
Some of the more common nursing home abuse case types involve:
- Physical abuse: Physical abuse involves actions directed towards patients which may lead to physical harm, including pinching, hitting, biting, scratching, hair-pulling or shoving. Overusing physical restraints is considered physical abuse. So is the intentional failure to treat an injury.
- Psychological abuse: There are many actions which can be considered psychological abuse, including yelling at, gaslighting, criticizing, shaming or humiliating patients.
- Sexual abuse: Unwanted sexual exploitation or attention is sexual abuse. This commonly happens to patients with an inability to express desires to not receive this attention, like patients who have dementia or are otherwise mentally incapacitated.
- Neglect: Neglect often occurs when there aren’t enough staff members at a nursing home, or when the staff is not trained adequately. It happens when employees don’t take proper care of patients. Sometimes they forget to bathe or feed patients. Sometimes they don’t remember to take patients to physical therapy. Sometimes they don’t answer when patients request assistance.
- Financial abuse: This occurs when employees take advantage of the financial assets of a patient by stealing them or compromising them in another fashion. Employees sometimes steal patients’ property or money, steal from their bank accounts, or steal their identity.
- Abuse by residents: Sometimes nursing home residents are abused by other residents. Nursing homes can be legally liable when this occurs since they have a duty to keep patients safe from harm.
We and our co-counsel have filed and settled countless cases of abuse and nursing home neglect of elderly residents including cases involving pressure sores, malnutrition, dehydration, and falls which cause fractures to the ankles, humerus and/or hip.
Filing A Nursing Home Abuse Claim
You may be eligible to file a nursing home abuse claim against multiple parties, including:
- Individual caregivers, such as nurses, nursing assistants or orderlies
- Managers or administrators of nursing homes who have a responsibility to provide proper supervision to their teams
- Operators or owners of nursing homes
Those who may be eligible to file a lawsuit include the victim, as well as the victim’s family if the victim is disabled. Those who file a lawsuit must be able to prove the following for the lawsuit to be successful:
- Duty: It must be proven that a nursing home possessed a duty to give a reasonable level of care.
- Breach: It must be proven that a nursing home breached this duty of care through recklessness, negligence, malice, fraud or oppression.
- Causation: It must be proven that injuries were suffered because the nursing home breached its duty of care.
- Damages: It must be proven that a victim suffered losses because of the conduct of the nursing home.
If you are able to successfully prove the four above elements, you might be able to recover financial compensation for:
- Physical pain
- Mental suffering
- Emotional distress
- Anguish
- Medical bills related to injuries caused by the nursing home
You may also qualify for punitive damages if you can prove that malicious conduct was involved, meaning someone intentionally caused injury, or someone engaged in behavior which was despicable while consciously disregarding safety.
Nadrich Accident Injury Lawyers has been filing nursing home abuse claims for over 30 years. We have the experience and expertise to put together a convincing claim for you. Call us today for a free consultation.
What Can a Nursing Home Abuse Lawyer at Nadrich Accident Injury Lawyers Do For Me?
Dealing with nursing home abuse can be terrible for families. However, this isn’t something you have to deal with alone. We can help reduce any stress involved with the legal process. You can expect us to:
- Establish facts: We will meet with you and talk about any mistreatment or abuse that has occurred. We’ll discuss the history of any care received at the nursing home, as well as the physical and mental capacities of you or your loved one. We will perform an investigation and gather evidence which will support your case.
- Collect information: We will gather witness statements, medical records, photos and more. This evidence that we gather will help support your nursing home abuse claim.
- Navigate the law: Where, when and how you can file a lawsuit over nursing home abuse depends on various laws. Our experience gives us a thorough understanding of state, federal and local laws which can affect your case.
- File a lawsuit: Filing a lawsuit is the next step. You become a plaintiff when this occurs. Lawsuits need to be filed in the right court system. Defendants need to be notified about the lawsuit with proper documents. We will ensure these steps get taken care of without delays or mistakes.
- Perform an investigation: We will thoroughly investigate your case during the discovery phase. This might include witness testimony.
- Perform settlement negotiations: Nursing home cases rarely end up in trial. They are usually settled out of court. We will work tirelessly to ensure you receive the largest settlement possible.
- Represent you in court: In the rare event settlement negotiations break down and your case goes to court, we will represent you in front of a judge or jury, who will give a verdict after each side presents their case. We have a long track record of success representing our clients in court and our 30+ years of experience will serve you well if your case goes to trial.
Nursing Home Abuse In The U.S.
People are facing difficult decisions about nursing homes. The decision to move a loved one into a nursing home raises very real questions about how the resident will be treated at the nursing home, and if the possibility of nursing home abuse exists. This is, unfortunately, becoming an increasingly legitimate concern. Studies have suggested that the problem of abuse in nursing homes may be far more prevalent than the public generally recognizes. In 1986, a landmark report by the Institute of Medicine found widespread nursing home abuse.
This widespread nursing home abuse led Congress to pass comprehensive legislation in 1987 establishing new standards for nursing homes. This nursing home abuse law requires nursing homes to “provide services and activities to attain or maintain the highest practicable physical, mental, and psychosocial well-being of each resident.”
The 1987 law and regulations limit the use of physical and chemical restraints on nursing home residents. They require nursing homes to prevent pressure sores, or bed sores, which are painful wounds or bruises caused by pressure or friction, which can become infected. They also establish other health standards for nursing homes, such as requiring that residents are properly cleaned and bathed, receive appropriate medical treatment, and are supervised to prevent falls and accidents. The regulatory requirements are at 42 C.F.R. Part 483.
Recently, investigators have begun to examine whether nursing homes are meeting the requirements of the 1987 law and its regulations. The results have not been encouraging. Certain nursing home abuse documented by the Institute of Medicine in 1986, such as the improper use of physical restraints and antipsychotic drugs, have been reduced, but health violations appear to be widespread. In a series of 1999 reports, the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO), an investigative arm of Congress, found that “more than one-fourth of nursing homes had deficiencies that caused actual harm to residents or placed them at risk of death or serious injury”; that these incidents of actual harm “represented serious care issues… such as pressure sores, broken bones, severe weight loss, and death”; and that “[s]erious complaints alleging that nursing home residents are being harmed can remain uninvestigated for weeks or months.”
Numerous lawsuits have been filed regarding the employees of nursing homes inappropriately and illegally sharing photos of residents, sometimes nude photos, on social media.
A New York Times investigation has found that the current five star nursing home rating system is broken and misleading, making nursing home-related decisions even more difficult to make.
Nursing Home Resident Abuse
Abuse violations are among the most serious violations that can occur in nursing homes. The elderly and disabled residents of nursing homes cannot protect themselves from physical attack or sexual assault. Sometimes they cannot even communicate to family members that they have suffered from abuse. Residents and their families are almost entirely dependent upon nursing homes to ensure the safety of residents.
If you believe that a loved one has been abused by a nursing care facility, or suffered due to negligent treatment, call the nursing home abuse attorneys of Nadrich Accident Injury Lawyers now for a free and confidential consultation. We will listen to your story and explain your options and rights. There are time limits for making a claim, therefore, contact us now by calling us, using texting us from this page, or completing the contact form on this page.
5,283 nursing homes, almost one out of every three U.S. nursing homes, were cited for an abuse violation in the two-year period from January 1, 1999, to January 1, 2001. This amounts to almost 9,000 nursing home abuse violations during this two-year period. All of these violations had at least the potential to harm nursing home residents.
Federal health and safety standards protect the vulnerable residents of nursing homes from physical, sexual and verbal abuse. To enforce these standards, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services contracts with the states to conduct annual inspections of nursing homes. These inspections assess whether nursing homes are meeting federal standards of care, including the prohibitions on abuse of residents. In addition, when individual files an abuse complaint, state inspectors are required to investigate these allegations and assess whether federal standards of care were violated by the nursing home.
- Over 2,500 of the abuse violations in the last two years were serious enough to cause actual harm to nursing home abuse victims or to place residents in immediate jeopardy of death or serious injury.
- In total, nearly 10% of the nursing homes in the United States were cited for nursing home abuse violations that caused actual harm to residents.
- Many of these nursing home abuse violations are discovered only after the filing of a formal complaint.
The percentage of nursing homes with abuse violations is increasing. As a matter of fact, the percentage of nursing homes cited for abuse violations has increased every year since 1996. In 2000, over twice as many nursing homes were cited for abuse violations during annual inspections than were cited in 1996.
Stop Nursing Home Abuse
The best way to stop nursing home abuse is to make sure violations are adequately punished. If a loved one has been injured by nursing home abuse, or by nursing home negligence, contact our experienced personal injury lawyers that have handled nursing home abuse cases. The nursing home abuse law firm of Nadrich Accident Injury Lawyers is experienced in nursing home abuse cases and will evaluate your nursing home abuse case at no cost to you. If we determine you have a personal injury claim, we will handle your case aggressively, and you pay absolutely nothing unless we win your personal injury case.
What Are the Signs of Nursing Home Abuse?
Unfortunately, many types of elder abuse exist. When the elders who took care of us get taken advantage of and hurt, it’s a tragedy. One common form of nursing home abuse is neglect. Since elderly people naturally decline as they age, it may be tough to identify health decline resulting from neglect.
Neglect in nursing homes can lead to sexual, emotional and physical injuries to the elderly, and even wrongful death. Many different injuries are commonly-found evidence that neglect occurred in a nursing home:
- Dehydration and malnourishment
- Pressure ulcers / bed sores
- Sexual abuse injuries
- Infections
- Hip fractures
- Mental health conditions such as PTSD, anxiety and depression
- Fractures and broken bones
- Improper aftercare of wounds
- Overdose and overmedication
- Medication and dosage errors
- Cellulitis and sepsis
- Cardiac arrest
- Coma
- Seizures
Elder Abuse And Dependent Adult Civil Protection Act
After years of near dormancy, the law designed for senior citizens to protect them against physical and financial abuse known as the Elder Abuse and Dependent Adult Civil Protection Act is receiving attention from a small number of lawyers including Nadrich Accident Injury Lawyers. Protecting the elderly is extremely important and this includes protecting the elderly from physical abuse against nursing homes, hospitals and even from their own families.
In cases of elder abuse, we have successfully used the Elder Abuse Act against individuals and corporations to obtain compensation for the elderly and dependent adult children against physical abuse.
Should you require assistance with an elder abuse issue or suspect that a loved one is potentially being abused, please contact us so a nursing home abuse attorney can provide you with an immediate, free evaluation of your situation. We have dealt with many of these cases and can be an invaluable resource for information and more importantly assistance.
