Inadequate Supervision

For many families, the justification for admitting a loved one in a nursing home or assisted living facility is not just for additional care, but for supervision. Even in somewhat healthy senior citizens, there are risks from being home alone. Those risks can include falling, leaving appliances on, wandering from home, or an inability to provide for one’s own activities of daily living. A nursing facility, it is believed, will not just care for your mom or dad, but will watch them at all times.

The truth is, the failure to adequately supervise vulnerable residents is a major cause of injuries in nursing homes and assisted living facilities in Southern California, and the reason why families inquire of elder abuse and neglect lawyers like us.

Upon admission to a nursing facility, caregivers are required by state law to assess the new resident, which includes an examination to determine the level of risk the resident poses to themselves and others. For example, can the resident ambulate safety, does the resident have good safety awareness, and is the resident a danger to him/herself or others. In evaluating these risks, the nursing home can devise a care plan to ensure that the patient is safe. That is the reason, of course, they are being paid in the first place.

The attorneys at Southern California Nursing Home Law Group have handled dozens of cases involving the negligent supervision of a resident:

• The resident had severe dementia and wandered into the back yard of an assisted living facility and fell down a flight of stairs. She fractured several bones and died within 30 days.
• The resident was placed in the Alzheimer’s wing of the nursing home, and another resident physically attacked him, causing him to fall a fracture his hip.
• The resident was known to have difficulty swallowing but was given non-pureed food against a physician orders and choked to death.
• The resident used the call button to seek help but was left alone in the room so long he tried to walk to the bathroom alone and fell and was left on the floor for 10 hours.
• The resident walked through an alarmed door and fell down a flight of stairs. The alarm sounded as designed, but no employees responded.

Nursing homes and assisted living facility have a legal duty to supervise its residents to prevent them from injury or other harms. The failure to do so can result in injury or death, as we have seen on too many occasions here at Southern California Nursing Home Law Group.

If you have a loved one that has been harmed due the failure a nursing home or assisted living facility to adequately supervise, we would like to talk to you about your case. You or the loved one may have legal rights that you are unaware of and may be entitled to monetary compensation for the damages. The lawyers at Southern California Nursing Home Law Group have been suing nursing homes and assisted living facilities for over 20 years and would be happy to guide you in your case.

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