POTENTIAL DEFENDANTS IN A NURSING HOME NEGLIGENCE MATTER
Attorneys involved in litigating nursing home neglect matters involving bedsores often encounter situations where more than one institution may be fault. For example, quite frequently the initial at-fault facility may be the hospital where the bedsore victim was a surgery patient. The surgery itself may have been executed perfectly. Yet, in the relatively short hospital stay after the surgery, the hospital’s staff may fail to use procedures which are well known to help reduce the possibility of bedsores in the recuperating patient. Perhaps the non-ambulatory patient had not been sufficiently turned, thereby increasing the risk of bedsores. Perhaps sufficient bed padding had not been provided to help “cushion” the patient’s body, particularly the buttocks area and feet where bedsores most often occur. Perhaps protective body lotions had not been used to provide a protective barrier between the patient’s body and bed sheets and thereby help reduce the possibility of bedsores.
In a previous blog, we distinguished the four stages of bedsores. Quite frequently bedsores arising from relatively short hospital stays due to inadequate nursing attention are highly treatable Stage I or Stage II bedsores. We would encourage the patient’s family members and friends to be on the lookout for possible bedsores. Suspected bedsores should be immediately reported to the nursing staff and the family members should follow up to ensure the proper wound care procedures have been initiated. Remember that the earlier a bedsore is caught, the more easily it can be treated. Once a bedsore progresses to a Stage 3 or Stage 4 bedsore, the prognosis becomes substantially worse.
If the patient is to be transferred from the hospital directly to his or her home or a family member’s home, the patient and/or the patient’s family members should carefully check the patient’s body for bedsores at the time of the patient’s release and take photographs if any suspect bedsores are found. If suspect bedsores are found, the patient should be seen by a doctor. The doctor will likely make a referral to a wound care specialist.
Many times, patients are released from a hospital to the rehabilitation departments of nursing homes, or back to the nursing home where they had been living prior to their hospitalization. One would hope that the patient would be checked for bedsores at the time of admission to or return to the nursing home by nursing home staff and that any found bedsores would be carefully documented.
Why? If bedsores are found, the nursing home has the obligation to take appropriate steps for commencing wound care treatment under a doctor’s care. Alternatively, if the patient was already receiving wound care treatment, the nursing home facility has the obligation to ensure that the patient continues receiving that treatment, as prescribed by a doctor.
Without proper nursing home administration of bedsore treatment, “still minor” bedsores originating at a hospital may worsen into extremely serious Stage 3 or Stage 4 bedsores. For those cases where the bedsores actually originate at a hospital and then worsened while the patient was at the nursing home facility, both the nursing home and the hospital could be liable for the patient’s pain and suffering.
Nursing homes are often underinsured or may not carry any liability insurance at all while hospitals, particularly private hospitals, have adequate financial resources. It is thus important for legal counsel to determine the initial source of the victim’s bedsores (e.g., hospitals) as well as all of the facilities where worsening of the bedsores allegedly occurred. If, due to negligent care, the bedsores originated at a hospital and worsened upon release to a rehabilitation center or nursing home which lacks insurance, the victim will at least have one viable party to sue for negligence, namely the hospital.
