Articles Tagged with San Diego elder abuse attorneys

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Whether you have already made one or more visits to a loved one in San Diego County during the holiday season or you have plans for an upcoming visit, it is a particularly good time of the year to be on the lookout for any signs of elder abuse or neglect if your elderly loved one is living in a nursing home, a skilled nursing facility, an assisted-living facility, or any other type of residential care facility for the elderly (RCFE) in Southern California. The holiday season often involves multiple visits from family and adult children gathering to see their parents, which means adult children and other family members can work together to identify potential abuse or neglect risks.

Making a Plan to Focus on Your Elderly Loved One’s Safety 

During the holiday season — or during any time of the year when family members gather to see a loved one in a nursing home or assisted-living facility — it is helpful to make a plan to focus on health and safety. Sporadic visits at other times of the year may be relatively quick, and those visits may involve only one person stopping by an elderly parent’s nursing home room or assisted-living facility residence. When multiple family members are together, especially adult children, they can work together to consider injury risks at the nursing home or other facility and to pay particular attention to warning signs of abuse or neglect.

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Elderly residents of nursing homes and assisted living facilities in San Diego County can sustain injuries in many different ways, unfortunately. In some cases, an elderly resident might suffer a preventable injury resulting from negligence. In other words, nobody intended to harm, but a lack of proper care or a failure to attend to safety concerns might have resulted in an accident and injury. Under other circumstances, an elderly resident might be harmed by intentional abuse at the hands of a staff member or caregiver. When is a San Diego nursing home itself liable for resident injuries? In short, a nursing home or assisted living facility can be liable in most cases involving resident injuries. Our San Diego nursing home abuse lawyers can tell you more.

Medication Mistakes

Medication mistakes are especially common in nursing homes, and they can involve mistakes in prescribing, dosing, filling prescriptions, and administering drugs. Often, staff members without the necessary training make errors in administering resident medications, and those residents sustain injuries. Even if a particular healthcare provider may also be liable for a medication mistake, nursing homes can also be liable.

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Having an elderly loved one in a nursing home or assisted living facility in San Diego County can be stressful, especially when there is so much news coverage about abuse and neglect impacting residents at these types of facilities. There are also many different forms of elder abuse, which can make it difficult for family members and friends to have the information they need about a particular kind of abuse. Our San Diego nursing home neglect attorneys can give you more information. The following are some of the most important things to know about passive neglect.

Passive Neglect is Not Usually Intentional

The term “passive neglect” refers to a type of elder abuse where a resident of a nursing home or assisted living facility does not receive the type or amount of care they need, but it is not usually intentional. The National Council on Aging (NCOA) defines passive neglect as “a caregiver’s failure to provide an older adult with life’s necessities, including, but not limited to, food, clothing, shelter, or medical care.” Passive neglect frequently occurs when a nursing home is understaffed.

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Elderly adults in San Diego County nursing homes and at facilities elsewhere in Southern California frequently are subjected to abuse and neglect. Yet as a recent study underscores, many cases of nursing home abuse and neglect go unreported, and the most common reason for the lack of reporting might be a fear of retaliation. Seniors in nursing homes and assisted-living facilities and their families should be able to trust that all employees at the facility have their best interests in mind and that the facility is properly staffed to prevent injuries resulting from neglect. However, abuse and neglect injuries are much more common than many people think, and facilities do not always move quickly, if they move at all, to terminate employees who have caused harm.

What do you need to know about the recent study and its implications for addressing nursing home abuse in Southern California? Our San Diego nursing home abuse lawyers can tell you more.

Nursing Home Residents Fear Retaliation and Avoid Reporting Abuse 

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Nursing home abuse can take many different forms in San Diego County, including sexual abuse. In Southern California, nursing home residents can be victims of sexual abuse and assault perpetrated by other residents, as well as by staff members. According to a recent report from KPBS, the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) is supposed to be transparent in providing information about nursing homes and histories of abuse, yet a recent investigation suggests that records of sexual abuse contain “inaccuracies and omissions.” It is important to be able to recognize signs of nursing home sexual abuse and to consider filing a claim against the negligent facility where the abuse occurred. 

California Department of Public Health’s Reporting of Sexual Abuse

The KPBS report discusses various incidents of sexual abuse in California nursing homes that have been identified as “enforcement actions” with findings of nursing home negligence. For example, the report discusses a case in which a woman in a nursing home alleged that she was raped by her caregiver. The investigation report, which can be found in the Cal Health Find Database, concludes that the nursing home where the sexual assault is alleged to have occurred “failed to provide a safe environment” for the resident. However, as the KPBS report points out, “one has to dig deep into what is known as CDPH’s ‘transparency website’ to find it.” Indeed, as the report underscores, the “main complaint page describes the attack as simply employee-to-resident abuse that was substantiated.”

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brian-erickson-204442-copy-300x169Residents of Poway should be aware of recent elder abuse allegations against a California VA hospital. According to a recent report from NBC News Los Angeles, a navy veteran’s family has filed an elder abuse and neglect claim against a Palo Alto veterans’ hospital following the veteran’s death. The report cites the family’s lawsuit, which alleges that the victim, Douglas Wayne Ross, died after sustaining a traumatic brain injury as a result of a fall. The family contends that “he was in need of continuous care and was left alone for too long.”

Details of the Lawsuit in California

How did the patient’s death occur? According to the report, 72-year-old Ross was admitted to the VA hospital in Palo Alto in spring 2016 for surgery. The surgery was supposed to “restore blood flow to his lower body.” After the first surgery, the patient suffered a heart attack. He remained at the hospital to recover, during which time he required continuous care. More specifically, the lawsuit alleges that he required “dialysis and blood thinners and was designated a high risk for falling down.”

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josh-rinard-108856-300x200If you have an elderly loved one who currently lives in a nursing home or assisted-living facility in San Diego County, it is important to learn more about proposed federal legislation that could starkly limit civil protections for victims of elder abuse. According to a recent article in East County Magazine, the bill at issue, H.R. 1215, “will effectively end California’s 20-plus year civil protection system for victims of elder abuse or neglect perpetrated by health care providers.” The bill has been named the “Protecting Access to Care Act of 2017,” but elder safety advocates argue that, if the name of the bill more accurately reflected its content and possible aims, it would be called “Obstruction of Justice for the Injured,” according to the article.

What do you need to know about the particulars of this bill and the harms that could arise if this proposed legislation passes?

Learning More About H.R. 1215: Protection Access to Care Act of 2017

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How, exactly, do elder abuse investigations work? After national news that Harper Lee, the famous author of To Kill A Mockingbird, might have been the victim of elder abuse, an article in Slate provided an in-depth look into investigations concerning reports of elder abuse and neglect. While each state has its own methods for looking into reports of nursing home abuse and other violations, it’s important for Californians with elderly parents and loved ones to understand the basics of an elder abuse inquiry.

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The Allegedly “Murky Field” of Elder Abuse and Competence

What does elder abuse look like, and how can we be certain when we see it? According to Rosalie Kane, a professor of health policy and management at the University of Minnesota, “the concept of elder abuse is a murky field.” Kane explained that “sometimes there’s too much branding of older people as incompetent,” and that can complicate conceptions of elder abuse. In other words, Kane believes that investigations into elder abuse allegations often aren’t taken seriously because of suspicions about the victim’s mental capacity.

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