Nursing homes, memory care facilities, and assisted living facilities exist to help people when they can no longer care for themselves independently. Sadly, some facilities do not provide residents with a safe environment. Failure to meet residents’ basic needs can lead to unnecessary and preventable illnesses, pain, and suffering.
If your loved one has experienced an injury or has developed an illness while residing in a skilled nursing facility, your family may be eligible to seek justice through a nursing home neglect lawsuit. An attorney with extensive experience establishing liability in Toledo nursing home negligence cases could guide you through the legal process.
Reasons Why Negligence Occurs in Memory Care Centers
Negligence can occur in memory care centers or assisted living facilities for several reasons.
Staffing Shortages
Many nursing homes lack enough workers to care for their residents properly. Care facilities often have difficulty attracting and retaining quality employees. Because they do not pay very high wages, many employees leave after only working for a short period.
Unfortunately, some facilities are more interested in protecting their profit margins than ensuring they have enough staff members to provide reasonable care to all residents. By keeping their facilities short-staffed, some nursing home owners and managers can spend less on resident care and divert more funds to profits.
Lack of Training
Facilities do not always take the time to train their workers on how to provide sufficient care to meet the residents’ daily needs. Without a quality training program, workers who want to help residents might not know how to improve their lives.
Lack of Oversight
Although the Ohio Department of Health has the authority to license and inspect facilities, they may overlook evidence of neglect in long-term care facilities. Someone must then take the initiative to report a problem.
A compassionate Toledo attorney understands how difficult it can be to witness the effects of negligence in a nursing home and could work tirelessly to help establish the liability of those responsible.
Types of Negligence That Can Occur
Nursing home residents can experience harm from many types of negligence, including:
- Inadequate medical care, such as untreated infections or illnesses that can quickly escalate to critical conditions
- Bedsores
- Malnutrition leading to weight loss
- Dehydration
- Falls and other preventable accidents due to lack of supervision and fall prevention strategies
- Elopement or wandering out of a memory care center or other facility without supervision
- Unhygienic living conditions
- Lack of socialization
Our legal team in Toledo could search for proof of a nursing home’s negligence and liability by interviewing staff, talking to other residents, and reviewing staff and training protocols.
Contact a Toledo Attorney for Help Establishing Liability in a Nursing Home Negligence Claim
Watching a loved one experience an injury or become sick because of something that happened in their nursing home can violate the trust that you put into that facility. Fortunately, a seasoned legal team might be able to help you.
Contact one of our local lawyers at Zoll & Kranz, LLC. We have experience proving liability in Toledo nursing home negligence cases, so let us review your legal options.