Families trust nursing homes to care for their elderly and infirm loved ones. Sadly, this trust is often misplaced. Many facilities maintain substandard conditions that either cause or aggravate health problems in their patients. This violates the duty imposed upon these nursing homes to act with reasonable care toward the patient. If your loved one is in a facility with unsanitary, unsafe, or otherwise poor conditions, his or her health and well-being could be jeopardized. This could cause avoidable problems like injury or disease, which in turn lead to medical bills, pain and suffering, and other losses. Fortunately, you and your family have options. Our nursing home abuse lawyers in Columbia can help put an end to this mistreatment and seek the compensation your family member deserves. Contact Rikard & Protopapas to look into some of the most common nursing home red flags you’ll read below.
What Could Indicate Poor Nursing Home Conditions?
If you haven’t been to your loved one’s nursing home in a while, the time to go is now. It’s well-documented that bad conditions are allowed to continue and even worsen when a resident’s relatives never or only infrequently visit.
Regardless of how often you see your family member, you should always be aware of anything that points to deteriorating circumstances. Evidence of these negative surroundings can be divided into three categories:
Facility conditions
By observing the facility, paying attention to your senses, and doing some research, you can uncover these common signs of a bad nursing home:
- Strong odors: Persistent and pervasive smells, especially of urine or feces, are clear indicators that the nursing home is unsanitary.
- Dirtiness: Filth, grime, and other forms of uncleanliness are breeding grounds for disease and infection. An already sick or immunocompromised patient could be at particular risk.
- Safety hazards: Look around your loved one’s room to check for dirty conditions or a lack of such features as safety rails, safety chairs, and easily accessible call buttons. Also check out the rest of the facility for anything that seems unsafe.
- Poor lighting: A specific example of a safety hazard, poor lighting is a risk for anyone with mobility or eyesight issues.
- No privacy or security: A lack of patient privacy or security exposes your loved one to the risks of assault and theft.
- Loud noises: Excessively loud sounds intrude upon the peace of mind and quiet that every patient should enjoy. Some indicators are noisy machines and phones not being answered.
- Bad food: The quality of the food could be in question, either in terms of nutritional value, spoilage, or unsafe food preparation and storage.
- Bad reviews: Never neglect to do your own research to learn if there are bad customer reviews. This is something you should do even after you’ve chosen a facility for your loved one.
Patient behavior
How the patients appear and act could give you an idea of how your loved one is being treated.
Watch out for the following:
- Unkempt residents: A resident with dirty hair, disheveled clothes, and hygiene issues can indicate mistreatment.
- Agitated or confused residents: These could be signs of depression, anxiety, or disorientation. In turn, these may point to medications not being administered or insufficient treatment.
- No outdoor or physical activity: Nursing homes should do what they can to allow their patients to have fresh air and physical activity. The absence of these suggests that the facility is indifferent to the residents’ needs.
- Residents constantly bed-ridden: As indicated above, physical activity is essential for resident health. If they are staying in bed past mid-morning or noon, something is amiss.
- Injured patients: First, see if there are any injuries with your loved one, such as bedsores, which you were not told about. Then see if the problem extends to other patients.
Staff behavior
Bad nursing home conditions are nearly always the consequence of staff problems. Here are some signs:
- Unsanitary practices: If staff members aren’t washing their hands or taking other precautions, your loved one may get sick.
- Lack of knowledge: Do the staff members seem confused about your family member’s needs or condition? Additionally, are the staff uninformed about facility programs, procedures, rules, etc.?
- Staff speaking negatively about patients: Degrading remarks, inappropriate jokes, and disrespectful comments about any patient (especially your parent or family member) are red flags.
- Staff discussing other residents’ medical information: Privacy laws such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) prevent staff members from discussing another patient’s medical data.
- Rude, dismissive, and evasive staff: If the staff are rude or dismissive to you, what does this say about how they treat your loved one? Refusal to answer simple questions is another problem.
- Unreasonable restrictions: These may come in the form of unrealistic visitation hours or not allowing family members to eat dinner with the patient.
- Understaffing: Get a sense of whether there aren’t enough staff members. A low staff-to-patient ratio means your relative might not be getting adequate care.
Contact Us If You Suspect Abuse or Neglect
These nursing home red flags should be taken seriously. Nursing home abuse and neglect, if not remedied, could have significant repercussions for your family member. Their physical health and safety may not be the only things at risk. Mental problems, anxiety, and depression could be caused or aggravated by poor nursing home conditions.
If these circumstances continue to decline, your loved one may need medical attention. He or she could seek monetary damages to cover this along with non-economic damages like pain and suffering and emotional distress. Contacting an experienced South Carolina nursing home abuse and injury attorney is the first step to seeking compensation.
Moreover, legal intervention could help prevent harm to other residents and perhaps even lead to the closing of a facility that has no business serving the elderly. We work hard to help victims of negligent facilities, not only by seeking legal damages but also by stopping ongoing abuse and neglect.
To learn more about red flags in nursing facilities, give the team at Rikard & Protopapas a call today at 803-978-6111, or complete our online form.