Nursing home caregivers provide a valuable service to the aging, disabled, and infirmed communities. However, there is often a fundamental conflict between the facility owner’s interests and the residents’ needs.
Many nursing home chains provide excellent care for their residents while still generating enormous profits for their owners. Unfortunately, some of the largest nursing home companies view any resident care service over and above the standard as cutting profits from the nursing home chains.
The personal injury attorneys at Nursing Home Law Center, LLC, represent victims injured in care home facilities, rehab centers, and assisted-living facilities throughout several locations in the United States. We also represent surviving family members filing a wrongful death lawsuit against the health care provider to pay for hospitalization, medical, funeral, and burial costs.
Call our law firm today at (800) 926-7565 (toll-free phone call) or through the contact form to schedule a free consultation. All information you share with our team regarding your situation in a nursing home chain or assisted living facility remains private through an attorney-client relationship.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, there are approximately 15,600 nursing homes in the United States in the caregiving industry, with a total of 1.7 million beds. In 2020, expenditures on long-term care reached roughly $239 billion. Nearly seventy percent of these nursing homes have for-profit ownership.
More than half of all skilled nursing facility beds belong to for-profit nursing home chains. The largest nursing home chains have experienced growth in recent years as they have taken over failing smaller chains of senior living facilities.
In 2020, the top ten largest chains controlled approximately 2,170 long-term care facilities in several locations. The number has grown since then.
The quality of care provided in nursing facilities has deteriorated in this century. The United States Government Accountability Office has documented that customer complaints about skilled nursing facilities have grown dramatically over the last fifteen years.
For example, the number of consumer complaints about California homes has more than tripled in that timeframe, from one complaint against each company home to five annually in California.
On a state-by-state basis, there has been an increase in the number of complaints filed in thirty-three of the fifty states, mainly against the largest nursing home companies.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) revealed several disturbing trends in resident care facilities. One of these trends is an increase in private equity ownership of for-profit facilities.
Residents often pay the price when a private equity buys a nursing home chain. A 2021 study concluded that private equity ownership increases the short-term mortality of nursing home residents by 10%, which represents more than 20,000 lives lost during 12 years, likely due to understaffing of the senior living company and the diversion of patient care funding solutions to private equity owners who own the market shares.
The CMS provides regularly updated information on all nursing care home locations in the US providing care to Medicare patients. The data includes every health inspection, substantiated complaint, penalty, violation, and other safety issues concerning nursing home companies. It affects the higher or lowest marks a nursing facility company will receive.
Many families review the Medicare and Medicaid information to determine the best place to send their loved ones, ensuring they receive the highest level of care from health professionals and that their daily-demand assistance with activities is met.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (Medicare.gov), under the guidance of the US Department of Health and Human Services, regulates nursing home companies and assisted living centers for the federal government. The leading senior living facilities in locations throughout the United States include:
The above list receives updates and may change at any point. Many senior health system chains provide services for nursing home patients in California, Illinois, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Wisconsin.
Low staffing levels flow through several areas affecting the resident’s daily life and overall health. Each area has been the subject of lawsuits against a nursing home chain.
For example, bedsores are one of the most common grounds in negligence lawsuits against rehabilitation centers and account for many of complaints against the largest nursing facilities in the market. Pressure sores (bedsores, pressure wounds, pressure ulcers, decubitus ulcers) occur when staff members leave residents in one position for too long.
The nursing assistants should shift the position of patients diagnosed at high risk for pressure ulcers at least once every two hours. Immobilization longer than two hours could cause the skin to break down.
The patient could develop life-threatening conditions, including sepsis (blood infection) and osteomyelitis (bone infection) if the nursing staff in these companies fails to provide appropriate infection control measures when treating bedsores.
When the largest nursing home chains do not have enough staff, nobody can move the residents, resulting in higher incidents of pressure ulcers within the organization. Also, understaffed corporate facilities experience falls by their residents at a higher rate.
There have been lawsuits against nursing homes that have alleged that understaffed homes have attempted to move residents with one certified nursing assistant (CNA) instead of the two required by the resident’s care orders.
There have been other lawsuits against nursing homes alleging that residents suffered injuries when their call light was ignored by the organization staff and they tried to move when they were unable.
Further, understaffed nursing homes tend to make mistakes in other areas, such as the resident’s care. Sometimes, this means that nursing homes fail to follow physicians’ orders for medical care.
Other times, residents are at higher risk of infection because showers are not given, and catheters are not changed. While better staffing protocols do not prevent all errors and omissions, there is a correlation between adequately staffed homes and homes fully compliant with nursing care home regulations.
From the moment you decide to house a family member in a nursing care home, you expect the staff to serve your loved one with the highest possible care, whether it’s a for-profit company or not, irrespective of the location of the care home.
When your loved one has suffered an injury at a nursing home due to understaffing, abuse, or neglect, you do not merely have to accept it and move on. You could retain a lawyer and file a compensation claim against the nursing company, primarily when the injury suffered by your loved one occurred at a chronically understaffed facility.
You might be eligible for financial compensation from the nursing home chain for the harm your loved one has suffered. Contact our law firm today at (800) 926-7565 (toll-free phone call) or through the contact form to schedule a free consultation.