California is not insulated from the national crisis of nursing home abuse. Despite state and federal laws intended to protect vulnerable residents in nursing homes, understaffing causes many homes to fall short of providing adequate care. The result is that loved ones become abuse victims and are at risk.
Attorneys for California Nursing Home Abuse
A California nursing home abuse attorney from the Nursing Home Law Center at (800) 926-7565 represents injured residents harmed through neglect and abuse.
Contact us today for a free consultation to discuss your compensation claim. Our attorneys work within California law to get your family financial compensation. Call our California law firm to set up your free consultation.
All of our California nursing home abuse cases are handled on a contingency fee basis where we only receive a legal fee when we receive a financial recovery for you. If there is no recovery, our legal services are free.
California's Poor Caregiving Facility Record
Inspectors with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services found severe deficiencies and violations at 306 (twenty-six percent) of California's 1200 elder care facilities, defects which resulted in substandard care. It has been estimated that one out of three CA senior care centers fails to provide the required minimum of 3.2 nursing hours to each patient every day.
Meanwhile, the need for long-term care services will only keep increasing. According to the state's Department of Aging, the population aged sixty years and over is expected to grow more than three times as fast as the total population in the next four decades, and this growth will vary by region.
Nursing Home Abuse and Neglect Personal Injury FAQs
If you have a loved one who has been the victim of nursing home abuse, you likely have many questions. Here are the answers to some commonly asked questions that people ask of a California nursing home abuse attorney.
Of course, should you have additional questions, we welcome you to contact our affiliated attorneys for a free consultation.
Who Can Be An Abuser?
According to RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network), abusers can be male or female, intimate partners, family members, caregivers, other patients, or friends, helping or visiting a patient in an elder care facility. The assaulter could be anyone known by affinity (in-laws), past relationship, blood relative, or marriage.
The predator could cause physical, emotional, sexual, mental, or financial abuse. Typically, the victim is a vulnerable child or adult suffering injury through intimidation, threatening, coercion, physical abuse, sexual assault, isolation, emotional abuse, financial exploitation, humiliation, or blaming.
Sadly, most California abusive cases are unreported because victims live in fear or suffer from developmental delay or other medical conditions that cause them to remain silent.
What Is Abuse in Nursing Homes?
The National Institutes of Health identify elder abuse in elder care homes as a serious problem that harms over five million senior citizens annually. Sadly, many of these physical abuse cases are unreported.
Government agencies recognize that victims usually know their abuser and see them as trusted friends, caregivers, visitors, or other residents. Most victims are vulnerable adults suffering from disabilities or dementia.
What Are the Different Types of Nursing Home Abuse
The CA Elder Abuse and Dependent Adult Civil Protection Act identifies the different types of nursing home abuse as serious bodily injury, sexual assault, injury to the victim's genitals/anus, assault with a deadly weapon, assault with force, broken bones, and wrongful death. Sexual abuse is a particularly terrible example of mistreatment and exploitation in a nursing home that often goes unreported.
In addition, nursing home residents may be victims of financial abuse and exploitation or psychological or emotional abuse. The different kinds of California nursing home abuse are set out in 42 CFR 483.12.
What Is The Average Stay In a Nursing Home?
A study released by the University of California-San Francisco revealed that residents' average stay in eldercare facilities is about 13.7 months. The average age of an assisted living facility resident is approximately eighty-three years old.
Women tend to stay longer in a care facility than men because of health disparities between the genders. Approximately fifty percent of all residents will die within the first six months after their admittance into the rehabilitation center.
Can I Move My Mother From One Nursing Home To Another?
Information released by the National Institutes of Health reveals that federal and state laws protect rehab center residents from unfair discharges and improper transfers to another facility. Medicare and Medicaid regulations strictly forbid administrators from transferring residents to another skilled caregiving facility or discharging them to home unless:
The facility is permanently closing
The patient failed to cover their medical expenses when required
A transfer or discharge to another location is necessary to ensure the patient's health, safety, or well-being
The resident's medical condition has declined so severely that the nursing staff is unable to meet their needs
The patient's medical condition has improved significantly where hygiene assistance, medical treatment, or drug administration at the facility is no longer required
What Is Elder Abuse?
The National Institutes of Health identify resident neglect or abuse as a designated caregiver's failure to meet the dependent's needs. Often, the caregiving staff or other residents compromised the resident's safety through neglect, mistreatment, or physical assault.
Typical forms of resident neglect involve:
Leaving the victim unattended
Not providing the resident with routine baths and showers upon request or schedule
Chronicle failures to administer prescription drugs, according to the doctor's orders
Allowing the resident to live in an unclean environment
Failing to provide the resident with necessities including shelter, food, water, and hygiene assistance
Dismissing or ignoring the resident's grievances or complaints
Not answering the resident's call light within a reasonable time frame
How Do You Prove California Nursing Home Neglect?
Every victim of nursing home abuse or neglect has a legal right to file a civil lawsuit to receive financial compensation for losses and damages. However, successfully resolving the case might be challenging.
The victim, or their nursing home abuse lawyers, must prove that negligence resulted in their injuries. The attorney might show how staff members, or the facility, neglected to meet the resident's needs. Proving a case could involve:
Documenting eyewitness accounts
Gathering audio, photographic, and video evidence that might involve surveillance cameras
Taking depositions to record the testimony of participators
Referring the victim to specialists to undergo additional diagnoses to determine the extent of the harm involving their disorder, personal injury, or mental health status
A California Personal Injury Attorney Can Help
Contact the California personal injury attorneys at Nursing Home Law Center today to discuss your case.
Our CA nursing home abuse attorneys currently represent neglect and abuse victims throughout California, including in Los Angeles, Oakland, Orange County, Riverside, Sacramento, San Diego, San Francisco, and San Jose.
Laws Protecting California Nursing Home Residents
The state has enacted laws designed to protect older adults' welfare, including those residing in nursing homes, primarily through the Welfare and Institutions Code and the Health and Safety Code.
Protective Placement and Custody of Endangered Adults (CA Welfare & Institutions Code, §15700, et al.) provides for emergency protective custody of a vulnerable adult suspected of being the victim of neglect or abuse. Suspected physical abuse resulting in physical harm must be reported to local law enforcement authorities as soon as possible.
Mello-Granlund Older Californians Act provides for a state long-term care ombudsman charged with investigating reports of abuse and monitoring the treatment of adults sixty or older in nursing homes and other residential care facilities.
Health and Safety Code (§1250(c)) maintain that nursing homes are supposed to provide continuous "skilled and supportive care" to residents. Because of their vulnerable state, elders in nursing homes are required to receive 24-hour inpatient treatment, proper nutrition, medical services, exercise, and activity services.
A California nursing home abuse lawyer can help you pursue remedies for violations of any of these laws.
Are you the victim of elder abuse in a CA elder caregiving center? If so, attorney James M. Morgan, Esq. and our other CA elder abuse lawyers can investigate your concerns and help ensure your loved one is safe. Call (800) 926-7565 toll-free for a no-obligation consultation.
Nursing Home Abuse & Neglect Attorneys
Entrusting the caregiving of a spouse, parent, grandparent, sibling, or child to a nursing home could be a difficult decision for a family to make. When you must take that step, you expect that the nursing home staff will strive to provide the best treatment and protection possible to your loved one.
You never expect to learn they have suffered abuse or neglect in a nursing facility. Unfortunately, as the U.S. population ages and the understaffed nursing care industry struggles to maintain professional standards in the face of growing need, poor patient treatment continues to be a mostly hidden problem.
Families Must Be Vigilant to Spot Signs of Nursing Home Abuse
It is a sad fact that many instances of nursing home exploitation and abuse go unreported. In fact, some stats show that only one in every 14 cases of abuse are reported and investigated.
There are many reasons for this. One is that the victims of the neglect or abuse are not able to make the report themselves because they could lack the cognitive and verbal ability due to illnesses such as dementia.
Thus, it is imperative that families check for some of the signs of nursing home abuse in California and make the report themselves if they suspect that something is wrong.
Once the family reports nursing home abuse, whoever receives that report must pass it along to both the nursing home administrator and the state regulatory agency practically immediately.
Nursing Home Neglect Is Too Common in San Diego and Throughout California
While the exact prevalence of San Diego nursing home neglect or abuse nationwide remains unknown, experts believe it to be quite pervasive.
The National Center on Elder Abuse (NCEA), and the Centers for Disease Control, have concluded that getting accurate statistics about abuse is nearly impossible due to challenges involved in gathering accurate data and deficiencies with state reporting.
But the statistics that are known are sobering:
Most victims of elder abuse tend to be female
Victims of elder abuse are three times more likely to be admitted to a hospital than aged persons who are not abused
Older people who experience even modest levels of abuse have a 300 percent higher risk of death compared to those who have not been abused
Contact a California Nursing Home Abuse Lawyer to Schedule a Free Consultation
Was a family member injured, neglected, abused, or did they die unexpectedly from mistreatment while living at a nursing facility? If so, we invite you to contact the nursing home abuse and neglect lawyers at Nursing Home Law Center today
Let us begin obtaining compensation on your behalf to ensure your family receives the monetary recovery you deserve.
Affiliated attorney Anthony Lanzone serves victims of nursing home abuse or neglect across California, including in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Mr. Lanzone's primary office is located at 5001 Airport Plaza Drive, Suite 210, Long Beach, CA 90815.
Federal Laws Governing Nursing Home Care
The U.S. Congress has enacted several laws designed to protect vulnerable elderly patients, which apply to all long-term caregiving facilities in the United States.
The Nursing Home Reform Act was passed in 1987 to establish basic standards of care for nursing home residents and set forth fundamental rights.
The federal government has a large number of nursing home regulations that govern practically every aspect of management in these facilities.
These include, among others, the right to be free from abuse, mistreatment, and neglect; to be granted privacy; to be treated with dignity, and to make individual decisions.
Caregiving facilities might not fail to accommodate the medical, physical, psychological, or social needs of their patients.
The Long-Term Care Ombudsman program created a network of advocates for nursing home residents in each state who investigate and attempt to resolve specific complaints involving abuse, neglect, or exploitation of a resident.
State Laws Governing Nursing Homes
California also has one of the most vigorous nursing home inspection regimes in the entire United States. Skilled nursing facilities in the state are regularly fined and punished for violations.
However, that does not always compel the facilities that are supposed to look after your loved ones to do the right thing. Here are some California resources for you and your family to review.
Hiring A California Nursing Home Abuse Attorney for Your Loved One
A nursing home negligence attorney can help you pursue remedies for violations of any of these laws.
If you suspect your loved one has been the victim of abuse in a California nursing home, attorney James M. Morgan, Esq. and our other nursing home abuse or neglect attorneys can investigate your concerns and help ensure your family member is safe. Call (800) 926-7565 toll-free for a no-obligation consultation.
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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