Falls in nursing homes can cause traumatic and sometimes fatal injuries to residents. Nursing home residents tend to have weakened muscles and bones, making them vulnerable to serious fractures or lacerations. Residents can also sustain head injuries, including concussions and other traumatic brain injuries, some of which can even cause permanent disabilities.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, falls were the leading cause of death for seniors 65 or older in 2019. They also found that nursing homes report between 100 to 200 falls per 100 residents each year. The real situation is likely much worse because nursing homes do not report all falls.
Inadequate staffing is probably the largest contributor to resident falls. When left alone, nursing home residents are particularly prone to falling, especially if they have trouble walking or standing for long periods or if they are on certain medications. Although nursing homes cannot prevent all falls, they must take steps to minimize residents’ risk of falling. Failing to do so can mean they shoulder responsibility when a patient falls and becomes injured.
Hazardous property conditions can include poor lighting, improperly maintained walkers or wheelchairs, uneven steps, and slippery or wet floors. Nursing homes are also responsible for falls and injuries caused by the actions of staff. Staff might push residents, roll them out of bed, or drop them while moving them from wheelchairs. Staff might also ignore residents’ calls for assistance, such as when they need to use the restroom, which may motivate at-risk patients to attempt to get up on their own.
A nursing home is responsible for its residents’ falls and subsequent injuries if it failed to take the following precautions:
Nursing home residents who have the highest risk of falling typically suffer from one of the following conditions:
It’s also important for residents’ families to know what medications their loved ones are being given and why. Nursing homes often give residents antipsychotic medications, especially residents with dementia. Many of my clients are surprised to learn that these antipsychotics have no clinical benefit for dementia patients. These medications can cause residents’ muscles to relax and impair their motor control, making them especially susceptible to falling and injuring themselves, even if they are otherwise relatively healthy when not taking the medication.
Nursing homes are expected to evaluate a patient’s physical and mental conditions upon entering the nursing home. This evaluation should include an assessment of the resident’s risk of falling, a record of their required safety devices, and a list of their medications. This information should then be entered into a resident care plan, which staff can use to ensure the resident’s safety and provide them with the personalized care they require. Residents should be reevaluated regularly to update care plans.
Resident care plans make it difficult for nursing homes to claim ignorance regarding a patient’s limitations or conditions that caused them to fall. Nevertheless, many states have laws that are favorable to nursing home corporations, making it hard for attorneys who don’t focus on nursing home neglect to successfully recover damages from fall and fracture lawsuits, even when the fall was clearly caused by the nursing home’s negligence.
When you call Pleasant Law, PLLC, I will evaluate your case to determine its strength. I do this because lawsuits against nursing homes are complex, which means I can only take on a limited number of cases at a time. This allows me to give my full attention to each case and to investigate the smallest of details. I help clients build strong cases from the ground up by working with victims and their families, obtaining patient records, requesting evidence, evaluating staff limitations, and investigating each facility’s track record of falls and fall-related injuries. No stone gets left unturned.
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