When your loved one is suffering due to nursing home staff or administrators' negligence, you need to do something about it. If you suspect that nursing home staff is not providing proper care for your loved one, a nursing home lawyer can help you investigate this problematic situation.
Federal laws and Arizona statutes are in place to help you stand up for your family's legal rights to avoid neglect and abuse.
If you, or your loved one, suffered injuries in a nursing facility, contact the Arizona nursing home abuse lawyers at Nursing Home Law Center (800) 926-7565 today. Your conversation with a nursing home abuse attorney is a free consultation.
Our law firm has a long track record of helping clients with cases involving things such as abused or neglected residents and bed sores.
Nursing Homes in Arizona
According to the information collected by Medicare, there are 149 licensed skilled elder homes in Arizona.
Based on the inspector's findings through investigations and surveys, the federal agency found that thirty-seven (twenty-five percent) of the state's nursing facilities fell below the national average after serious deficiencies and violations were identified.
Nursing Center Abuse Injury FAQs
Residents and their families often ask the following questions of a personal injury lawyer. Here are answers to common questions about nursing home neglect.
What Is Abuse in Nursing Homes?
According to the National Institutes of Health, elder abuse in nursing facilities is widespread, harming over five million senior citizens every year. Unfortunately, many cases of abuse and neglect go unreported.
Most abuse victims know their abuser, who was likely a trusted friend, visitor, caregiver, or other residents. Many victims of abuse or neglect are extremely vulnerable, including those with dementia and disabilities. Abusive behavior includes:
Violence
Verbal, psychological, and emotional abuse
Sexual assault
Monetary manipulation and financial abuse, including theft of credit cards and bank accounts
Physical assault
Intentional neglect
What Are The 3 Most Common Complaints About Nursing Homes?
The National Institutes of Health identify the three significant complaints of nursing home residents involving caregivers and other residents that include:
Staffing problems – Many nursing facilities are understaffed or operated by untrained professionals who failed to follow established protocols and the resident's Care Plan.
Depriving social interaction – Many residents feel isolated in their facility and barred from social interaction with other patients in common areas, religious services, and mealtimes.
A lack of dignity and respect – Understaffing and poorly trained nursing assistants often lead to emotional abuse of patients in the facility when staff members neglect the resident's standard necessities and assistance with health and hygiene.
What Are The 4 Types Of Abuse?
According to RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network), horrific forms of caregiver abuse include:
Physical abuse including bullying, intimidation, physical restraint, isolation, endangerment, and aggression
Verbal abuse involving personal attacks, blame games, intimidating words, ethnic slurs, screaming, humiliation, and derogatory remarks
Mental abuse involving manipulation, projection, staring, rage, playing the "victim card," gaslighting, and withholding communication through the "silent treatment."
Sexual assault involving jealousy and rage, ultimatums, coercion, selfish appeals, degrading acts, rape, sodomy, inappropriate touching, sadistic acts, and indecent exposure
What Is Patient Neglect?
According to the National Institutes of Health, patient neglect is defined as a caregiver's failure to meet a dependent person's needs. Typically, patients' safety and well-being are compromised by the nursing staff's neglectful actions failing to provide adequate medical care and hygiene assistance.
Specific acts that could be defined as patient neglect involve:
Dismissing or ignoring the resident's complaints
Leaving the resident unattended when assistance is necessary
Not showering or bathing the resident when requested
Failing to report the resident's illness, injuries, or change in condition to physicians, medical team, or family
Deprivation tactics by withholding food, water, shelter, care, and hygiene assistance
Not attending to the patient lying in their urine and feces
Taking too long to respond to the patient's call light
How Do You Prove Neglect?
Were you neglected by the nursing staff? You likely have the right to file a civil lawsuit to obtain financial compensation. However, proving negligence might be challenging.
An attorney working on your behalf could show that the administration or staffing members failed to meet the patient's medical, medication, physical, and emotional needs. Proving the case typically requires:
Recorded evidence involving direct observations
Video, audio, and photographic proof
Eyewitness testimony acquired through depositions
A review of the resident's medical records and lab reports
Obtaining second opinions from doctors diagnosing the patient's harm, injury, disorder, or mental health status
Notifying state and federal regulators including the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and Adult Protective Services (APS)
What To Do When A Nursing Home Makes A Mistake?
The Agency for Health Care Research and Quality (AHRQ) maintains data on abuse, mistreatment, and mistakes occurring in nursing facilities nationwide. The agency recommends the following procedures and protocols if you were harmed by a nursing error, including:
Notifying law enforcement – The local police department can provide immediate protection from the nursing staff and start a criminal investigation
Report it to the State Agency - Arizona tightly regulates elder homes. They can investigate and fine the facility where the mistake happened.
Notifying a local long-term care facility ombudsman – A local ombudsman works in the community as an advocate for nursing home residents and older adults, addressing concerns involving abuse, neglect, malnutrition, unexpected weight loss, and other harm that requires legal action
Notifying APS – The state maintains an APS agency that can investigate all family grievances involving abuse and neglect and ensure that all appropriate measures are taken
Notifying a social service worker – Usually, officers from the APS agency work in unison with social services to handle ongoing care involving healing from abuse and neglect
Speaking with Phoenix nursing home abuse attorneys – Lawyers specializing in personal abuse and neglect cases and elder abuse can assist in resolving compensation claims and legal lawsuits to ensure that the victim's rights are protected.
Common Causes of Nursing Home Abuse
Nursing homes are often understaffed. They cut back on staff in order to boost and inflate their profits. The employees that they do have are stretched thin and not properly trained.
In addition, elder homes may not follow rules that require them to perform background checks and not hire people who have been convicted of certain crimes.
Nursing homes are required to have procedures about abuse and follow them. Otherwise, you should contact a Phoenix nursing home abuse attorney.
Your Loved One's Rights in a Nursing Home
Federal laws provide for the following in nursing homes:
The right to be free from any type of abuse
A minimum quality of care
The right to be informed of and participate in care decisions
The ability to make complaints
These are just some of a nursing home resident's rights. When these rights are violated, you should contact nursing home abuse lawyers.
The Nursing Home's Duty of Care
When a nursing home admits your loved one as a resident, they owe your family member a duty of care.
Here, this means that the facility needs to provide care and safeguard their residents' well-being just as any other reasonable nursing home would.
Things such as medical mistakes and nursing home abuse and neglect are breaches of the duty of care.
Nursing Home Negligence Claims in Arizona
The Adult Protective Services Act currently defines what abuse, exploitation, and neglect mean in the context of the nursing home environment.
Loved ones need to be aware of what constitutes abuse, exploitation, and neglect so that they can recognize their forms and protect their loved ones.
Abuse means an intentional infliction of harm, injury caused by negligent acts or omissions, unreasonable confinement, and sexual abuse.
Exploitation refers to taking advantage of a vulnerable adult for the criminal's personal profit or gain.
Neglect refers to a pattern of conduct in which an individual is deprived of food, water, services, sufficient living conditions such as heat and air conditioning, and other services that could help a resident maintain an adequate standard of living.
An Elder Care Injury Attorney Can Help
Was your loved one harmed, or did they die prematurely while residing in a nursing home? If so, contact the Arizona personal injury attorneys at Nursing Home Law Center at (800) 926-7565 to discuss your case during a free case evaluation.
Nursing home abuse or neglect is legally actionable like any other personal injury case.
So long as nursing home residents suffered an injury while under the supposed control of a nursing home, you should contact us to explore your legal rights to compensation.
Damages for Nursing Home Negligence in Arizona
Victims who decide to file a negligence claim to recover damages for injuries should be aware that there is no damages cap under the state Constitution for negligence or wrongful death claims.
However, there is a two-year statute of limitations period for negligence and wrongful death claims. Victims or surviving families should get in touch with a nursing home abuse lawyer and report abuse immediately upon discovering any signs of it. The families of injured residents may receive:
Damages for pain and suffering
Cost of medical bills
Emotional trauma
Wrongful death damages
Punitive damages
Arizona Statistics of Nursing Home Abuse & Signs of Abuse
Unfortunately, statistics show that the state has some of the nation's worst deficient nursing homes that do not follow professional standards. A 2008 University of California-San Francisco research study shows that seventy percent of all elder homes failed to abide by professional standards that year.
Over half of nursing centers maintained an accident-prone environment and failed to provide quality supervision to patients.
Some common signs of nursing home abuse that should alert your attention are the following:
Nursing home lawyers are available to provide a free consultation to assist you in ending the abuse that has impacted your life. Contact our Phoenix Arizona nursing home lawyers to set up an in-person meeting or receive information on the phone.
Receive legal advice from our nursing home abuse lawyers that will help you vindicate your rights for the physical and mental abuse or nursing home neglect that your loved one has suffered.
Phoenix Nursing Home Law Firm Filing Lawsuits for Injuries in Long Term Care Facilities
Families are often shocked when their parent, spouse, sibling, or child in a nursing home develops debilitating pressure wounds.
Often, the families are told that their loved one's condition caused the pressure wound results, or the wound is one of the many side effects of the medication prescribed by their doctor.
However, skin ulcers are preventable or can be effectively managed to ensure it does not advance to a life-threatening stage.
Call the Phoenix nursing home abuse attorneys at Nursing Home Law Center LLC for a free case review. We can help you and your loved one get the answers you deserve.
Our law firm handles skin ulcer lawsuits on a contingency fee basis where there is never a fee charged unless there is a recovery for you.
Other Arizona Nursing Home Abuse and Neglect Resources
Jonathan did a great job helping my family navigate through a lengthy lawsuit involving my grandmother's death in a nursing home. Through every step of the case, Jonathan kept my family informed of the progression of the case. Although our case eventually settled at a mediation, I really was impressed at how well prepared Jonathan was to take the case to trial. Lisa
★★★★★
After I read Jonathan’s Nursing Home Blog, I decided to hire him to look into my wife’s treatment at a local nursing home. Jonathan did a great job explaining the process and the laws that apply to nursing homes. I immediately felt at ease and was glad to have him on my side. Though the lawsuit process was at times frustrating, Jonathan reassured me, particularly at my deposition. I really felt like Jonathan cared about my wife’s best interests, and I think that came across to the lawyers for the nursing home. Eric
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