Nursing Home Neglect Lawyers in NJ

Nursing Home Malpractice Lawsuits

Types of Nursing Home Abuse 

According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), nursing home neglect is often defined as the failure of a caregiver to properly provide for an elderly person, which can include the failure to provide proper care, food, supervision, medicine, health care and treatment, clothing, and shelter.  Elder neglect includes many different circumstances that may jeopardize an older adult’s health and safety.

Common forms of nursing home abuse include:

• Physical injury from falls
• Malnourishment or dehydration
• Bed sores, pressure ulcers
• Gangrene
• Aspiration pneumonia
• Over-sedation
• Poor medical care
• Medication mistakes
• Lack of supervision
• Financial exploitation 
• Property theft
• Abandonment
• Ineffective equipment
• Sexual abuse 
• Coercion
• Physical or mental abuse
• Poor personal hygiene 
• Bruises
• Broken bones 
• Urinary Tract Infections
• Sepsis
• Wrongful death

Click to Enlarge

Nursing Home Negligence and Bed Sores

Bed sores, also known as pressure ulcers, are one of the most common signs of nursing home neglect.  According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 11% of nursing home residents suffer from bed sores, which are often a direct result of negligent care.  Depending on the severity of these pressure ulcers, older adults can experience severe repercussions.

What Are Bed Sores?

The CDC defines bed sores as “wounds caused by unrelieved pressure on the skin”  which typically develop over a person’s “bony prominences,” including elbows, heels, hips, shoulders, back, and in some cases even the back of the head.

Bed sores are among the most serious medical conditions that occur at nursing homes, and their presence in nursing home patients is often an indication that a nursing home is not providing quality care.

Severity of Bed Sores in Nursing Homes

Medical professionals use a staging system for rating the severity of bed sores.  Typically, these systems focus on the depth of the damage to soft tissue, which can range from “least severe” to “most severe.”  According to the CDC, the stages typically look like this:

• Stage 1: a persistent redness in the skin;
• Stage 2: loss of partial thickness of the skin, which can look like an abrasion, a blister, or a shallow crater;
• Stage 3: loss of full thickness of the skin, which usually looks like a deep crater; 
• Stage 4: loss of full thickness of the skin such that muscles or bones are exposed.

The CDC suggests that “Stage 2” pressure ulcers are among the most common in nursing home residents who have been victims of neglect. If you discover that an elderly loved one has developed bed sores, consult a lawyer for legal advice to discuss your options in suing a nursing home for negligence.  

Complications Arising From Bed Sores

Bed sores can cause a number of medical complications, including:

• A variety of different types of infections, such as cellulitis (skin), osteomyelitis (bone), endocarditis (heart lining), meningitis (cerebrospinal fluid), sepsis (blood), and even different forms of necrotizing fasciitis (commonly referred to as flesh- eating bacteria);
• Septic arthritis, a form of joint disease caused by bacterial infection;
• Abscesses, a type of skin and soft tissue lesion; 
• Heterotopic bone formations, a medical condition where bone deposits form in the soft tissue, typically around the hip joints, resulting in pain and impaired mobility.

Facts and Figures about Nursing Home Bed Sores

How often are nursing home residents diagnosed with a bed sore?  Based on data collected by the CDC, more than 10 percent of nursing home residents have suffered from a bed sore.  Of those patients, about half of those diagnosed had Stage 2 bed sores.  

Some other significant facts and figures include:

• Age: nursing home residents aged 64 years and younger were actually more likely than older residents to be diagnosed with bed sores.
• Time of Residence: residents who were at a nursing home for one year or less were more likely than long-term residents to be diagnosed with a pressure ulcer.
• Weight Loss: about 20 percent of nursing home residents with recent weight loss also had a bed sore.
• Wound Care Service - More than one-third of all nursing home residents with bed sores rated as “Stage 2” or higher required “special wound care services.”

Medication Errors

According to a study published by the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, up to 27 percent of nursing home residents suffer from medication errors. Some of the most common causes of medication mistakes and medical malpractice are:

• Understaffing, which forces nursing home staff to work when they are fatigued and more likely to make mistakes.
• Careless mistakes, when nursing home care workers make preventable mistakes such as misreading prescriptions and medical records and administering the wrong medication. 
• Misdiagnosis, when a nursing home fails to take the resident’s personal medical history into account.

Warning Signs of Nursing Home Abuse

Family members should be on the lookout for common signs of elder abuse and neglect at their loved one’s assisted living facility.  Common signs of abuse and mistreatment include:

• changes in a resident’s behavior or personality; 
• demeaning or controlling behavior by staff members, or significant tension between a resident and the caregiver, which may be a sign of emotional abuse;
• unexplained broken bones, welts and bruising, and if the caregiver refuses to allow family members to be alone with a resident, which may be a sign of physical abuse; and/or
• unsanitary conditions in the resident’s room.

Contact a New Jersey Nursing Home Abuse Attorney

If you have an elderly loved one who was recently diagnosed with bed sores or has shown any of the signs or symptoms of other forms of neglect or abuse, it is important to discuss your legal options with an experienced lawyer. 

It is important to act in a timely manner. Statutes of limitations in New Jersey limit the amount of time that an injured individual can file a lawsuit to seek justice and financial compensation for his or her damages.

It is impossible to make generalizations about the value of any nursing home case without knowing the details of the injuries and how the abuse took place. New Jersey law allows recovery for a wide range of situations, many of which may not be readily apparent to the injured party. This includes past medical bills, future medical and rehabilitation costs, therapy, lost past wages, lost future income, punitive damages, pain and suffering, and more. A personal injury attorney with years of experience will fight to obtain money for you and your loved one to compensate your family for all of your damages, past, and future.

Contact our law offices today for real-time assistance from a real person by calling us at 1-800-624-8888 or by submitting a free online case evaluation.

The Rothenberg Law Firm services clients throughout New Jersey, with local offices in Bergen County, Ocean County and Camden County.