Columbus Nursing Home Abuse Lawyer

Do you have a loved one in a nursing facility or long-term care center? Many of the victims of nursing home abuse suffered serious violations or harm through physical or verbal abuse, invasion of privacy, or inappropriate sexual behavior. Any form of nursing home abuse is not only unacceptable; it is a crime.

Was your loved one hurt in a nursing home? The affiliate Ohio personal injury attorneys at Nursing Home Law Center, LLC, provide legal help to many families whose loved ones were victims of gross negligence, injury or abuse.

Call our Columbus nursing home abuse lawyers from our law firm at (800) 926-7565 (toll-free phone number) for immediate legal advice. Schedule a free case review with our nursing home abuse lawyers, and let us discuss your legal options to obtain financial awards to ensure you are compensated for your damages.

All confidential or sensitive information you and your family members share with our nursing home abuse lawyers remains private through an attorney-client relationship. Let our network of affiliate nursing home abuse lawyers protect your family's rights and contact us today!

Physical abuse harms the patient physically, either intentionally or unintentionally. Physical abuse examples could be hitting, slapping, kicking, using retrains, or shoving your loved one. These can lead to abrasions, broken bones, or bruises.

Sexual abuse is any form of nonconsensual sexual involvement with a patient. The abuse could occur by rape, sodomy, forcible nudity, inappropriate touching, or taking pictures of the patient when they are not dressed.

Financial abuse occurs when caregivers use a resident’s money as their own, steal their personal valuables, or defraud the resident into changing their power of attorney to the caregiver.

Emotional abuse involves causing psychological harm to the patient. It happens when a staff member isolates the patient, acts aggressive, controlling, verbally abusing, or demeaning the resident.

Nursing home neglect occurs when:

• Caregivers at a Columbus nursing home don’t tend to the patient’s overall well-being,
• Adequate care is not given according to the resident’s Care Plan,
• The medical professional fails to keep their oath to protect residents from elder abuse.

Don’t wait until it is too late to tell authorities, be vigilant in reporting abuse or neglect cases in Columbus nursing homes. Your loved one may suffer in silence and be afraid to speak up.

These are two common forms of nursing home neglect:

If a nursing home staff fails to reposition your loved one regularly, unrelieved pressure can cause pressure sores or pressure ulcers to develop. Elderly residents who cannot turn and move by themselves must have regular help from staff members.

As elderly residents continue to age, they also have reduced mobility in nursing facilities. Caregivers should assist each resident with daily tasks to maintain their mobility. Still, patients may remain sedentary because of an old injury, sore body, or inability to move.

Now, these residents depend on nursing home staff members to be repositioned at least once every one to two hours. Common places for bedsores are where the body makes contact with the bed or chair t. Areas to find these neglect injuries are the heels, buttocks, elbows, shoulder blades, and backs of your loved one.

When staff members do not reposition your family member for long periods, a sore develops, becomes infected, infects the blood, and eats away at the skin, which is very painful but entirely preventable. Unfortunately, this type of negligence is so common and severe that there are multiple pressure ulcer stages of bedsores.

The four stages of bedsores:

• Stage 1: A reddened area of their body
• Stage 2: The skin breaks down, bleeds, oozes, and is inflamed
• Stage 3: The skin breakdown may spread and create a deeper wound
• Stage 4: The sores expose the bone, present a high risk of sepsis, and can sometimes prove fatal. Pressure ulcers at this stage rarely heal adequately.
• Unstageable: Is identified by the dead skin, and plaque known as eschar covers the sore. Slough will appear underneath the eschar, a tan, brown, green, or yellow debris.

Slough is the body’s natural defense and should be left alone and removed by a doctor. At this stage, there will typically be deep tissue damage.

If your loved one presents to show signs of poor hygiene, that is a typical indicator of neglect or, in some cases, elder abuse.

Caregivers of a nursing home may fail to perform hygienic care for your family member. It is uncomfortable and unacceptable because a lack of hygiene can also be dangerous to a nursing home resident.

Other forms of a lack of hygiene can also be your loved one living in an untidy room or in an unclean environment. Signs of negligent nursing homes may look like trash left spilling from the bins and bed sheets regularly unchanged.

Indications of lack of hygiene are:

• Urine and body odors
• Greasy hair
• Unclean clothes
• Crusting of the eyes and dirty nails
• Signs of poor dental hygiene
• Their overall appearance is disheveled and unkept

When proper hygiene is not performed, a loved one may be at a greater risk of:

• Infections and bedsores
• Oral hygiene complications
• Undiagnosed complications
• Spread of disease
• Psychological and mental decline

The Nursing Home Rights Act (NHRA) sets the qualifications for care facilities nationwide. According to the NHRA, every elderly citizen has the right to:

Be treated with respect: As a nursing home resident, you have the right to be treated with dignity and respect, which means that you should be allowed to make your schedule by deciding when you go to bed, rise in the morning, and eat your meals, and participate in the activities you choose.

Be free from restraints: Nursing homes can’t use physical or chemical-induced restraints to make dealing with complex patients easier for the staff’s convenience.

Get proper medical care: It involves being fully informed about your health status in a language you understand, constantly being told about any medical condition you may present, and knowing the drugs, vitamins, and supplements you are ingesting. You have the right to choose your doctor and to participate in the decisions that affect your care, such as developing your care plan.

The right of access: Obtain access to all your records and reports, including clinical descriptions, without deliberate delay. If you have a guardian, they also have the right to view all medical records and make critical decisions.

Have your family and friends involved: Family and friends can help make sure you get good quality care. Guests are allowed to visit, ask about daily activities, and get to know which caregivers are involved with your daily routine and immediate care.

Spend time with visitors: You can spend private time with visitors and have them over at any time, as long as you wish to see them, as long as the visit does not interfere with the provision of care and privacy rights of other residents.

Nursing home residents who were injured or suffered abuse might have a cause of action for financial recovery against the nursing home or their staff.

You can rest assured about your loved one receiving financial awards or compensation for damages after filing a Columbus nursing home abuse lawsuit with a competent personal injury lawyer.

Your family member can typically recover:

• Medical bills
• Physical therapy costs
• Fees your nursing home abuse attorney may have spent upfront
• Funeral and burial costs in case of wrongful death
• Pain and suffering
• Compensatory damages

The State of Ohio has alarmingly high nursing home abuse and negligence statistics, higher than the national average. A loved one living in an Ohio facility may be more susceptible to abuse, according to the Ohio Department of Aging:

• Ohio requires significantly fewer training hours from nursing assistants than the number of hours required by other states. Ohio only requires 75 hours of training for nursing assistants, the primary caregivers in nursing and assisted living facilities.
• According to the Ohio Administrative Code, Ohio nursing facilities must only make 2.5 hours of nursing staff time for each patient daily. If your family member has special needs, that amount of time is not enough to get them through their daily activities, which means they are likely to suffer some form of nursing home negligence.
• Ohio has a limited number of nursing home inspectors compared to other states.
• Most Ohio nursing home facilities are operated as for-profit organizations. Profit organizations are usually ranked at the bottom of the national Nursing Home Compare rankings.

• Ohio Department of Aging: Long-term Care Ombudsman (LTCO) serves the population of adults that receives home care, assisted care, or are residents in long-term care facilities. The Long Term Care Ombudsman will investigate complaints and work with your family to solve issues within nursing homes. You can contact your region’s office or call the statewide hotline.
• Ohio Attorney General Health Care Fraud/Patient Abuse/Neglect is most helpful when the patient is at risk of immediate harm. They serve patients in long-term care facilities and investigate Medicaid fraud and patient abuse and neglect in long-term care facilities.
• Ohio Department of Health Division of Quality Assurance helps patients receiving Medicare or Medicaid by investigating submitted complaints. If they cannot help, they have a process to refer you to an agency that can. It is essential to contact them to help other patients from having the same fate of abuse and neglect as your loved one.
• Adult Protective Services helps persons over 60 (in some counties over 18). Knowing that each county’s job and family services department will investigate reports of abuse, neglect, and exploitation of adults age 60 or over is essential.

Are one of your family members suffering from an injury or experiencing pain caused by someone in a Columbus nursing home? Take immediate legal action for your loved one, and call a Columbus nursing home abuse lawyer from our law firm to schedule a free case evaluation.

We have represented many families to seek compensation from negligent nursing homes, financial exploitation, and elder abuse their loved ones have experienced in a nursing facility. Our affiliate nursing home abuse attorneys at the Nursing Home Law Center, LLC, can assist you in understanding your rights and seeking financial compensation for your Columbus nursing home abuse or neglect case.

Our legal team of exceptional nursing home neglect lawyers consult with you about nursing home abuse or neglect case, explain the legal options, and work tirelessly to ensure you recover compensation.

Call us at (800) 926-7565 to arrange a free consultation with one of our nursing home neglect attorneys in our law firm. Our capable team of Columbus nursing home abuse attorneys will review your situation, complete a free case evaluation, and ensure your loved one has the right nursing home abuse lawyer at their side.

Our nursing home abuse attorneys provide immediate legal representation, advice, and counsel without upfront fees. All our legal services are on a contingency fee basis and are paid after negotiating an acceptable out-of-court fair settlement or winning your case at trial.

Confidential or sensitive information you provide to our nursing home neglect lawyers is kept private through a lawyer-client relationship.

• World Health Organization - Elder Abuse
• National Coalition on Ageing - Senior Citizen Abuse