West Valley Post Acute Abuse and Neglect Lawyers

It is a fact of senior care that nursing homes will occasionally make a mistake. This happens from time to time when there are thousands of tasks performed by staff each day. However, mistakes should be minor and infrequent. When they are frequent, it is an indication of subpar care at a nursing home. When this mistake harms a family member, your family has a cause of action against a nursing home and the Nursing Home Law Center  attorneys can help you pursue it.

West Valley Post Acute

This nursing home is a 128 bed for-profit facility that offers short and long-stay care to residents of the San Fernando Valley area. The Medicare/Medicaid approved facility is located at:

7057 Shoup Ave
West Hills, CA 91307
(818) 348-8422
West Valley Post Acute

Nursing homes are subject to a large number of laws, both on the state and local level. There are a number of federal laws and regulations and nursing homes are inspected yearly to make sure that they are following all of this rules. Skilled nursing facilities can be fined if they break these rules and a resident suffered injuries as a result. In addition, residents and their families can also file complaints with the California Department of Public Health who investigates the complaints and takes regulatory action against the nursing home as necessary.

West Valley Post Acute racks up complaints and subsequent citations at an alarming rate. There have been 46 citations issued as a result of complaints in the past three years. Just in the second half of 2018, there were 13 separate complaint investigations that resulted in citations for the facility. This was in addition to the 28 citations contained in the September 2018 inspection report.

This facility has received one fine from the federal government and one from the State of California in the past three years. In 2018, California fined the nursing home $18,000 when a resident, who was admitted to the facility without a pressure ulcer, developed a Stage IV pressure ulcer. This is the most serious type of bedsore and requires prolonged inattention on the part of the nursing home staff, both in not shifting the resident’s position frequently, and the failing to care for the pressure ulcer once it has developed. There have been numerous other citations issued to this nursing home for inadequacies in both their means of preventing and caring for pressure ulcers.

In 2016, the nursing home was fined approximately $23,000 by the federal government. The facility failed to take the appropriate measures to implement a fall prevention plan for a resident who was a high risk of falls. As a result, the resident suffered a fall in which they sustained a compression fracture in their back which caused severe pain and a permanent decline in their ability to ambulate. In addition, the facility failed to maintain the hot water temperature in the shower below a certain level that could cause injury.

While the facility has received only two fines in the past three years, the complaint inspections indicate that the nursing home often fails to provide effective individualized care for its resident. Care is often slipshod, with staff failing to follow physician’s orders and failing to implement resident’s care plans. Although West Valley Post Acute tracks the national average in terms of nursing time per resident, it does not have enough RNs on staff, and this is where medical care of the residents suffers.

The inspection reports and complaint citations also reveal many instances of dangerous conditions at the nursing home that have the potential to cause injuries to residents. Nursing homes are obligated to provide a safe environment for their residents that is free from accident hazards. Besides dangerously hot water in the shower, there have been numerous other safety violations such as unsecured televisions and failures to place oxygen warning signs on residents’ doors. Many of these are indicative of a lack of quality to the services provided. While the nursing home has been repeatedly cited for these violations, they have not addressed the root causes of these problems since they keep occurring.

In addition, there have been numerous other violations that involve a failure to provide services that meet a professional quality of care. Injections have been given improperly, pain has not properly been treated and care plans not followed. While these in itself are not grounds for lawsuits, they can be if family members are injured by lapses in care.

Sometimes, complaints and regulatory actions are not enough to get nursing homes on the right path when it comes to caring for their residents. It is lawsuits and the threat of more litigation that makes nursing homes realize that providing insufficient care will cost them more than they save by cutting back on staff. Contact us : the attorneys at the Nursing Home Law Center have a long track record of holding nursing homes accountable across the State of California. Call us today at (800) 926-7565 to find out what we can do to make sure that your family and loved one get the justice that they deserve for an injury that your loved one has sustained at a California nursing home such as West Valley Post Acute.

Sources

• State of California - Health and Human Services Agency / Citation Number: 920014441
• Inspection Report - 09/15/2016