The right New York Nursing Home Neglect Lawyer makes all the difference in the world.  Bedsores and falls in nursing homes in New York has reached epidemic proportions.

Nursing home falls are very common among residents in nursing homes and can cause serious injuries and death among the victims. The frail and sick conditions of nursing home residents warrant extra special caution and care on the part of nursing home personnel and doctors.  For the reasons stated above it is clear why they difficulty walking compared to other older adults living in the community. Moreover, nursing home residents also tend to have problems with thinking or memory, or have difficulty with the tasks of daily life causing the percentage of nursing home falls to be large.  This creates an atmosphere ripe for injuries.

The number of falls for elderly people in nursing homes is significant and the injuries from those accidents are often severe and can sometimes cause wrongful deaths. According to the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, each year, about 1,800 elderly people living in a nursing home die from fall-related injuries. Other statistics on nursing home falls include:

-About 5% of adults 65 and older live in nursing home, but nursing home residents account for about 20% of deaths from falls in this age group.

-Each year, a typical nursing home with 100 beds reports 100 to 200 falls. Many falls go unreported.

-About 10% to 20% of nursing home falls cause serious injuries; 2% to 6% cause fractures.

-As many as 3 out of 4 nursing home residents fall each year. That’s twice the rate of falls for older adults living in the community.

There are certain situations and circumstances that create a higher risk for a nursing home resident to fall. These include:

-Muscle weakness

-Gait or balance problems

-Environmental hazards (i.e., wet floors, poor lighting, incorrect bed height)

-Medication intake

-Difficulty moving form one place to another

Individuals who suffer injuries due to a fall in a New York nursing home do have legal rights. Many of times, the fall is caused due to the negligent care of the nurse or caregiver, not enough supervision, or environmental hazards such as incorrect bed height. If the resident falls due to those circumstances or any other negligent act from a nurse or caregiver in a New York nursing home, it can give rise to a New York nursing home abuse and neglect lawsuit.

The person, or most typically a concerned family member, should contact a New York nursing home neglect and abuse lawyer immediately after a fall accident in a nursing home to investigate the cause of the accident. These injuries are often not well-documented and it is necessary to do a full investigation, especially because the person does not always have the ability to remember or describe the incident. An injured person may be entitled to monetary compensation for the injuries in a fall if the fall took place in a nursing home and the nursing home failed to take proper preventative fall measures.

A jury in New Mexico recently awarded $54 million to the family of a nursing home resident who died of untreated internal bleeding. 

This huge verdict is a message and testament to the grossly negligent care that one typically gets in American nursing home facilities.

The award is the state’s largest ever in a case involving nursing home neglect, say attorneys in Albuquerque.

According to the lawsuit, in 2004 78-year-old Barbara Barber died of internal bleeding at a nursing home owned by ManorCare Inc. Attorneys for Barber’s family argued that employees at the Albuquerque nursing home failed to seek treatment for Barber, who bled to death over several days.

The lawsuit also accused ManorCare employees of attempting to cover up the manner of Barber’s death. The family’s attorneys said employees at the facility disposed of blood-stained pillows and sheets in Barber’s room without notifying the health department.

Following the trial, ManorCare issued a statement expressing sympathy for Barber’s family. The company, however, denied any wrongdoing and said it stands behind the care Barber was provided.

Barber’s daughter, Lori Keith, said the verdict will allow her to begin the process of grieving the loss of her mother.

What we should all be thinking about in this case is this: you work hard your whole life, raise a family and try and do the right thing only to have your remaining days composed of pain and anguish, and, in this case, neglect tantamount to torture simply because a nursing home looks to cut corners and not hire the proper skilled staff.  Capitalism does not work here and needs to be put in check. 

Thank god for nursing home neglect/abuse lawyers.  If you have any questions please call a nursing home neglect lawyer today for free at 1(800)WE-FIGHT or email us for a free online consultation.

The headline in the Sun reads: N.Y. Doctors Could See $50,000 Fee: ‘Surcharge’ Would Rescue Malpractice Insurers.

The scary headline comes from an interview with Superintendent Eric Dinallo, who is running a task force to address the insurance “crisis” that hit when New York jumped its medical malpractice premiums 14% this year. The reasons for the jump are an issue I addressed earlier, and are a function of state mis-management during the George Pataki years (see: Why New York Medical Malpractice Insurance Jumped 14%.) Among the many reasons were artificially low rates (set by the state) and Governor Pataki taking (with legislative approval) about $700 million from a malpractice rainy day fund to help balance the state budget.

The screaming headline in the paper (front page, above the fold) it should be noted, had nothing whatsoever to do with rising malpractice claims or payouts. Those have remained stable for many years. No, the reason for the headline is the state-created shortfall, and the ways they are trying to fix the system they broke.

One method of trying to “fix” the system, of course, is to break it further by trying to blame lawsuits for the problem. We see these types of complaints all the time. If only the health care workers would be given some form of immunity for negligence, it is argued, all would be well with our health care system. Because, as everyone knows, nothing forces a person to act responsibly better than grants of various forms of immunity or protection.

Public Citizen recently put out a report on the faux crisis. It is a devastating indictment of the state’s mismanagement and puts to bed the phony claims that problems are related to lawyers and lawsuits. It also points the finger where it belongs and makes its own suggestions on how to remedy the problems.

Some more facts from the Public Citizen report:

• There have been fewer medical malpractice payments in the past five years than in any five-year period on record;
• Amounts paid out, when adjusted for inflation and population, have either risen slightly in the past five years or declined slightly, depending on the measure used;
• Only about 1 percent of New York’s doctors are enrolled in the state’s program for physicians deemed too risky by commercial insurance providers. Yet these doctors’ payments have been so massive that they and other losses have drowned the program in more than $500 million in red ink this decade;
• A sliver of doctors are responsible for nearly half of the dollars paid out for medical
  malpractice in New York. Physicians who made three or more malpractice payments
  between 1990 and 2006 — accounting for no more than 4 percent of New York’s
  doctors — were responsible for nearly half (49.6 percent) of medical malpractice
  dollars paid out on behalf of doctors in the time period.
• Costs for cases involving brain damage, blamed by some for rising insurance rates,
  are in fact modest in comparison with other types of cases. The category for injuries
  including brain damage ranks 5th of 10 in total amounts paid out. This fact exposes
  the lunacy of the radical proposal to deprive newborn babies of their legal rights and
  cede their care to a state-run fund.
• Researchers have found that premiums consistently make up only a small percentage
  of doctors’ total expenses and that rising premiums have not, historically, depressed
  physicians’ incomes.

The state’s Department of Health’s Office of Professional Medical Conduct has been notoriously lax when it comes to doctor discipline. Just last month it was revealed that it waited three years to alert the public that a doctor was using dirty siringes of multi dose vials thereby contaminating the vials and exposing hundreds of people to infections. According to the Public Citizen study, New York’s comptroller found that the Office of Professional Medical Conduct failed to investigate about 175 doctors for whom investigations should have been triggered based on the agency’s existing criteria.

Frankly, if we have an insurance crisis because the state took $700 million to balance the budget in tough years, and we have a small percentage of doctors responsible for so much of the damage, then it is a no-brainer on how to equitably fix the problem. It isn’t by a $50K surcharge on doctors, a scare tactic if ever I saw one. And it isn’t be restricting access to the courts for those that have been injured by negligence.

It’s by doing two basic things: Taking the money back from the general fund where it had disappeared to and investigating the few bad doctors that do so much of the damage and putting them out of business. It means a responsible government engaging in good health policy by policing the medical force and using sound budgetary policy instead of shell games.

Fault here lies not with the vast majority of doctors, nor with the patients that were injured or their representatives. It lies with former governor and the legislature. The problems have been identified and the proper solutions offered. The state should do the right thing and fix the problem appropriately, without injuring those that are most involved.

If you have been injured by medical malpractice contact the aggressive, caring lawyers at 1(800)WE-FIGHT today.