Ryan Zavodnick | July 2, 2024 | Nursing Home Abuse \ Personal Injury
Releasing your loved one to the care of a hospital or a nursing home requires you to exercise a certain amount of trust. There is no way to avoid it sometimes–your loved one might have care needs that you simply cannot manage at home due to lack of resources and expertise.
Suppose your loved one develops bedsores while in the care of a hospital or nursing home; that is a good reason to suspect that they are receiving substandard care. So what can you do?
The Truth About Bedsores
Bedsores, also known as pressure ulcers or pressure injuries, are injuries to the skin and underlying tissue caused by prolonged pressure. Left untreated, they get worse and worse. Hospital patients and nursing home residents frequently suffer bedsores because they spend long periods of time in the same body position.
What Do Bedsores Look Like?
Stage one bedsores look like red areas of skin. These areas might be warm or firm. As the bedsore progresses, it might look more like an open wound.
Why Bedsores are Evidence of Neglect
Bedsores are almost always a preventable medical condition.
Medical staff can prevent bedsores by:
- Regularly repositioning patients to relieve pressure on the skin;
- Maintaining skin care and hygiene;
- Using pressure-relieving devices designed to prevent bedsores; and
- Maintaining proper nutrition and hydration.
The presence of persistent bedsores on your loved one’s body is strong evidence of caregiver neglect.
What to Do If You Discover Bedsores on Your Loved One’s Body
If you discover bedsores on your loved one’s body, Job One is to treat them and photograph them. Speak to medical personnel at the facility where your loved one is staying, armed with your photographs. Continue to monitor your loved one frequently, and if their condition does not improve, try to move them to another facility.
Talk to a lawyer to see if you have a medical malpractice or a nursing home abuse claim. Although ensuring your loved one’s safety from now on is your number one priority, seeking financial compensation for your loved one is important, too.
The Duty of Care: Hospitals and Nursing Homes
You can win a medical malpractice claim against a hospital or a nursing home abuse claim against a nursing home without proving that they violated any specific regulations. Nevertheless, it can be easier to win your claim if you can prove a regulatory violation.
Here are the regulations that apply to nursing homes and hospitals:
- General principles of Pennsylvania medical malpractice law
- Federal nursing home regulations apply to all nursing homes that accept Medicare or Medicaid
- Pennsylvania nursing home regulations fill any regulatory gaps that federal regulations fail to cover
Since these regulations are complex and their application is not always obvious, it is best to seek the assistance of a lawyer to interpret their application to your loved one’s case.
Civil Liability for Bedsores: Filing a Lawsuit or Negotiating a Personal Injury Settlement
Liability for bedsores is almost always based on negligence (carelessness).
You can seek the following types of damages:
- Economic damages: Medical expenses, lost income, and other easily quantifiable losses
- Non-economic damages: Pain and suffering and other forms of psychological harm
- Punitive damages: To win punitive damages, you must prove particularly outrageous conduct on the part of the institution itself, not its employees. You can lose a claim for punitive damages even if you win economic and non-economic damages.
Personal injury compensation for nursing home neglect can be substantial.
Who to Seek Compensation From
Talk to your lawyer about who to file your claim against.
The most common defendants are:
- Hospitals and nursing homes: Hospitals and nursing homes can face liability for
the conduct of their employees, for their own policies and executive decisions (understaffing, for instance), and for their own negligence (negligent hiring, negligent supervision, etc.).
- Doctors who work at hospitals: Even if doctors are independent contractors and not employees.
Nursing home staff typically don’t earn enough money to make it worthwhile to sue them.
Do You Need a Lawyer for a Nursing Home Abuse or Medical Malpractice Claim?
Both nursing home abuse and medical malpractice claims are difficult to win because (i) they tend to be complex, and (ii) defendants tend to fight to the bitter end to preserve their reputations. If your loved one is suffering from bedsores, you might need a lawyer.
Contact Our Personal Injury Law Firm in Philadelphia Today To Get Help With Your Case
To learn more and get the help you deserve, call Zavodnick & Lasky Personal Injury Lawyers at (215) 875-7030 or contact us online.
You can also visit our law firm at 123 S Broad St #1220, Philadelphia, PA 19109.