Lawyer Resources for Falls in Nursing Homes

Nursing home falls can cause tragic injuries to your loved one, including broken limbs, severe abrasions, concussions, permanent mental damage, permanent disabilities and even death. The emotional turmoil that a vulnerable resident can experience after a nursing home fall includes depression, feelings of isolation, loneliness, anxiety, inability to communicate, trauma and other psychological illnesses. Nursing homes are liable in many cases for fall-related injuries, and it is important for you to stand up for the legal rights of a loved one who has suffered from nursing home falls. You can schedule an initial consultation with a nursing home lawyer to understand the compensation that may be available for a loved one who has suffered in falls in nursing home facilities.

Causes of Nursing Home Falls

Nursing home staff frequently fails to perform the required assessments to protect vulnerable adults from fall-related injuries. Nursing homes must fill out a fall-risk assessment, but these assessments often go missing, are incomplete or not filled out with enough care. Residents may need special medical equipment or beds to prevent falls in a nursing home. Residents with physical or mental disabilities are especially susceptible to falls in nursing homes.

Nursing home falls occur when there is failure to maintain clean and safe premises for residents. Residents may have access to broken or damaged wheelchairs, or there may be spilled liquid on floors. There may be a lack of specialized bathing equipment available for residents, and this also increases the likelihood that nursing home falls will result. Improperly trained staff may drop a resident during the transfer in and out of a nursing home bed. Even more disturbing is when nursing home falls are the result of other forms of abuse, such as the use of chemical restraints. Unnecessary medications may cause a resident to become drowsy and unable to walk properly in hallways. Residents under the influence of chemical restraints are at a great risk to suffer from fall-related injuries.

Required Supervision Under the Law and How Nursing Homes Fail to Adequately Supervise Residents

Nursing homes are required to provide consistent supervision of patients who may be at risk for suffering from falls. Under-staffing frequently accounts for a lack of consistent supervision of patients. Staff members may also be fatigued if they are forced to work long shifts, and this may result in improper supervision of residents at risk for falls.

In addition, those residents who have suffered from falls are required to have additional supervision. Close observation is required to ensure that residents who have been involved in falls do not suffer internal wounds or bleeding. In some of the worst instances, this close observation is not provided and leads to the death of residents. A resident may die from intracranial hemorrhages that develop after nursing home falls.

Statistics of Nursing Home Falls in the United States

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that over 1,800 nursing home residents die from falls every year. About 10 to 20 percent of all falls result in serious injuries of nursing home residents. One significant aspect of this problem is that the majority of falls go unreported, so family members may never learn about a fall. If family members see outward bruises or other injuries, then this may indicate that a nursing home resident has been involved in an unreported fall. The CDC also reports that nursing home residents are often involved in multiple falls in a given year. The average resident is involved in at least two to three multiple falls every year.

Get Help from Nursing Home Lawyers Today For Your Loved Ones Injuries Sustained In A Fall

The nursing home injury attorneys at Rosenfeld Injury Lawyers can help you move forward in handling a case that involves fall-related injuries of your loved one. It can be frustrating to realize that nursing homes frequently fail to meet reporting requirements for these types of accidents, but our team of seasoned nursing home lawyers are prepared to investigate such cases and ensure that justice is served in your case. Don’t let the nursing home pass off your loved ones fall as an inevitable event! The majority of nursing home falls are due to the negligent assistance of staff or the failure to keep an environment safe and free from clutter and potentially dangerous conditions.

Another Example Of Nursing Home Negligence: Disabled Patient Falls Down Unsecured Stairway

March 24, 2011 | Nursing Home Law Center Staff

Sometimes I see news stories with such common fact patterns that I have to look at the date of the report as I frequently ask myself, “didn’t I just see this article?”

Unfortunately, the cycle of negligent nursing home care continues with seemingly never ending cycles of stories about patient injury and death.

And yes, many of these do have an erry resemblance to one another. If there’s one thread of similarity amongst many of these stories, it’s that the majority of these occurrences could likely have been avoided with a small dose of adequate judgment.

Nursing Home Spotlight: Alden Town Manor

October 15, 2010 | Nursing Home Law Center Staff

$C2 fracture$ Alden Town Manor is a skilled nursing facility in Cicero, IL that was recently cited by the Illinois Department of Health following a March 30, 2010 survey at the facility. The focus of the survey was related to a March 6, 2010 incident in which a patient fell at the facility and subsequently died due to head trauma and cervical fractures.

An investigation into the incident revealed that Alden Town Manor failed to properly care for the patient in the following respects:

1. Assess a severely injured resident on the floor after a fall

Rapid Decline For Elderly Nursing Home Patients Following Fall-Related Injuries

September 21, 2010 | Nursing Home Law Center Staff

“A fall for someone who is 91 and fail, it really ends her quality of life”

Mindy Greiling, a caring daughter and state representative in Minnesota, sums it up best when describing the spiral of events that her mother experienced following a fall at the Samaritan Bethany. Until you witness the first-hand decline patients experience following a fall, it can be difficult to relate to the experiences gone through by both patients and their families.

Unlike falls in younger people, elderly people involved in ‘minor’ falls can experience devastating consequences from both a physical and psychological point of view. Perhaps most frustrating in these cases is the fact that many of these falls contribute to a patient’s loss of will to live.

Medical Facilities Must Use Wheel-Locks & Supervision To Protect Patients In Wheelchairs

September 10, 2010 | Nursing Home Law Center Staff

Perhaps the most basic safeguard nursing homes and hospitals can implement with wheelchair patients is the utilization of wheel-locks. Too often, physically disabled patients are simply propped up in their wheelchairs with the assumption that they face little chance of getting injured.

However, as I have discussed before, wheelchair patients must be properly supervised in order to minimize the chance of accidental injury due to the rolling of a chair or falling from it. The lack of supervision appears to have played a role in the case of a Connecticut nursing home patient who literally rolled from the facility to his death.

The incident involved an 88-year-old man with dementia at Bishops Corner Skilled & Nursing Rehabilitation. According to news reports of the incident, the man rolled from the front of the facility, down more than 40-foot hill, through a fence, before hitting his head on concrete. The man was pronounced dead shortly after the incident at a local hospital as a result of the head injury he sustained in the incident.

California Nursing Home’s Failure To Provide Fall-Prevention Safeguards Results In A Substantial Fine

August 25, 2010 | Nursing Home Law Center Staff

Too little, too late– best summarizes Pilgrim Haven Health Facility of Los Angeles, reaction to fall-prevention measures suggested by a patient’s physician and the facility itself. The omissions appear to be responsible for the fall-related death of an 85-year-old man and have initiated a substantial fine by the California Department of Health.

In the course of investigating the death of the elderly patient, authorities determined that Pilgrim Health made numerous errors with respect to its medical treatment of a patient with a history of falling.

After an initial fall in October, 2009, fall precautions were order by the man’s physician and by Pilgrim Health itself. The physician instructed the nursing home to use an electronic fall monitor on the patient and the facility noted that the man should have his walker within reach at all times and should further be supervised while walking.

Wheelchair-Bound Nursing Home Patients Must Be Properly Supervised To Avoid Injury

August 23, 2010 | Nursing Home Law Center Staff

Allowing a nursing home patient to sit comfortably in their wheelchair in a hall or perhaps in an outdoor area of the facility seems like a pretty innocent act– right? I mean aren’t patients in wheelchairs entitled to a little fresh air or just hang out in an common area with other patients?

Despite the seemingly harmless act of sitting in a wheelchair, nursing home employees need to take steps to ensure the safety of these handicapped residents– even if they appear to be sitting idly. Too often nursing home employees take for granted that wheelchair patients’ limited mobility puts them at increased risk for falls and collisions with their surroundings at the facility.

A recent situation involving a disabled nursing home patient made the news, after the woman sustained serious injuries in a fall from her wheelchair. The woman’s injuries include: fracturing her collarbone, sustaining a closed head injury and suffering multiple bruises and abrasions. The incident occurred at the Jewish Home of Eastern Pennsylvania.

Nursing Home Injury Laws

February 15, 2010 | Nursing Home Law Center Staff

Picture-321 In times of need, locating necessary information regarding the legal rights and resources for nursing home patients can be difficult and imposing. In this respect, we are proud to introduce a new resource for patients, families and practitioners looking for a concise compilation of information regarding nursing home laws. Nursing Home Injury Laws, provides every states’:

Nursing Home Laws
Medical Malpractice Laws

Falls In Nursing Homes Are A Serious Threat To The Safety Of Many Patients

December 30, 2009 | Nursing Home Law Center Staff

Given the frequency (approximately 80+% of all nursing nursing home patients will experience a fall this coming year) with which nursing home falls occur, facilities must be on the lookout when it comes to implementing fall prevention techniques in order to improve patient safety. Too often, the prevention comes too late– if at all.

Here are our most popular fall-related entries over the past year:

How Many Falls Is Enough To Impose Responsibility On Nursing Home?

Bone Fractures In The Elderly Require Special Attention To Improve Recovery & Prevent Complications

October 14, 2009 | Nursing Home Law Center Staff

Many elderly people suffer broken bones during admissions to nursing homes due to; falls, being dropped, or perhaps improper care from staff. Regardless how the fracture occurred, a fractured bone in the elderly must be timely identified and treated.

What is a fracture?

A fracture is a broken bone that requires medical attention. Fifty percent of women over age fifty and twenty-five percent of men over age fifty will suffer from an age-related bone fracture sometime in their lifetime.

Even Common Falls Put Elderly At Risk For Developing Subdural Hematomas

October 9, 2009 | Nursing Home Law Center Staff

Frequently undiagnosed and under-appreciated, falls amongst the elderly can frequently result in brain bleeds or technically termed ‘subdural hamatoas’. Because elderly are predisposed to developing subdural hamatomas, staff in nursing homes and hospitals need to be tuned into the symptoms and when to seek additional medical care.

What is a subdural hematoma?

A subdural hematoma is a type of intracranial bleeding (hemorrhage), caused by head injury. Subdural hematomas occur when blood vessels burst in the space between the brain and the outermost membrane that covers the brain (dura mater). The collection of blood forms a hematoma, which puts pressure on the brain tissue.