It’s a shocking statistic, especially for the increasing number of Americans charged with caring for elderly parents: At least one out of every three nursing home residents is harmed by the treatment they receive while in a home’s care, according to a government study. And most of this harm is preventable.
When these nightmare scenarios happen, the only recourse most victims and their families have is to file a lawsuit. One need only search “nursing home jury verdict” online to find examples of heart-wrenching neglect and the subsequent judgments in those cases: failing to respond to an 87-year-old woman’s calls for help, after which she fell and broke her hip ($4 million verdict); failing to protect an 81-year-old man from being viciously beaten by a roommate who’d been involved in 30 assaults prior to moving in with the victim ($160 million); letting a 90-year-old woman languish with a festering pressure sore, acute appendicitis, and a urinary tract infection so severe it had entered her blood ($14 million); injecting a diabetic patient with the incorrect dose of insulin, sending them into hypoglycemic shock and causing brain damage ($1.05 million); and failure to treat a patient’s infection which then turned gangrenous, requiring portions of a bone to be removed ($20 million).
Read more here: https://www.publicjustice.net/will-congress-give-abusive-nursing-homes-get-jail-free-card/
*photo credit Alex Wong, Getty Images
