Long Island Bedsore Lawyer

If you or a loved one has suffered bedsores, call a Long Island bedsore attorney at 631-451-7900 to set up a free legal consultation today.

Bedsores are something that should not happen in a nursing home setting. Even if they did occur, they should never worsen to the point where it jeopardizes your loved one’s health and well-being. Nursing homes should always provide proper care to identify and treat bedsores to preserve the health of residents.

Unfortunately, nursing homes do not always uphold their obligations to residents. They put their financial interests first and do not provide the care they must under the law. Many facilities are understaffed, and the staff they have are overworked and underpaid. This can lead to neglect and the development and worsening of painful and even toxic bedsores.

If your loved one suffered a preventable bedsore in a nursing home, they might seek financial compensation for the harm they experienced. You should reach out to Long Island nursing home injury lawyers of Rosenberg & Gluck, LLP, for a free case evaluation. We help clients with injuries from many sources and seek maximum compensation in every case.

Learn how we can help you and your loved one today.

Table of Contents

Bedsores Are Serious Medical Conditions

Bedsore does not quite capture the seriousness of this medical condition. Another name for a bedsore is a pressure ulcer or decubitus ulcer. It is an injury to the skin caused by sustained pressure on a specific body part for an extended time. What starts as minor skin irritation can become a gaping hole in the skin and cause a nursing home resident to suffer septic shock.

Seniors are at risk of bedsores when they are in one position for too long and there is continuous pressure on their skin.

It can happen:

When they lie in bed
When they sit in a chair
When they are in their wheelchair for an extended period

Many nursing home residents are not fully mobile and cannot move their bodies around the room. Therefore, they spend long periods either in bed or in their wheelchair, making them a high risk for bedsores. They do not have to be in an actual bed to develop the injury. Any extended inactivity in the same place will put the skin under pressure and cause it to break down.

For a free legal consultation with a bedsore lawyer serving Long Island, call 516-451-7900

Bedsores Happen When in the Same Position for a Long Time

Bedsores happen when a particular part of the body gets irritated. For example, when the resident is in a wheelchair, their ankles can rub against the footrest for an extended period. The resident’s skin is already at risk of breakdown because it dries out as they age. There may be even more of a risk for injury because the nursing home is not properly feeding or hydrating them, making their skin even dryer.

Nursing home residents are more likely to develop bedsores on bonier parts of their body, where they do not have muscle or fat to cushion them from the pressure of being pressed against a surface.

These body parts can include:

Heels
Tailbone
Shoulder blades
Hips
Elbows

How Nursing Homes Should Prevent Bedsores

The nursing home has a legal obligation to form a plan to deal with the potential for bedsores when a particular resident is a risk. The nursing home must have bedsore prevention in the senior’s care plan and follow that plan to the letter.

Some measures that the nursing home can take to reduce the risk of pressure sores include:

Changing the position of the resident frequently, so one area is not continuously resting against a surface
Using a particular mattress for the resident that reduces the amount of pressure on their skin
Keeping the skin clean and dry by regularly washing it

In addition, nursing homes must promote skin health by properly feeding and hydrating their residents. Dry skin is more likely to break down when it is under pressure.

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What Is the Main Reason Nursing Home Residents Get Bedsores?

long island bed sores lawyers The unfortunate reality is that, for whatever reason, nursing homes do not always live up to their obligations. The main reasons are that nursing homes are understaffed, and the staff that they have is untrained. For nursing homes, staff represents their single most significant expense.

To maximize their profits, many facilities will not hire enough people to properly care for the residents. They may cut back on hiring RNs because these nurses make the most. Alternatively, they may employ fewer CNAs, leaving the staff that they have stretched in many places at once. Even if the nursing home has a pressure ulcer prevention plan, they may not have the ability to follow it. In this economy, many nursing homes do not want to pay the wages that staff costs, so they stretch the people they have.

The Four Stages of Bedsores

Even minor bedsores can be very dangerous. Without the proper care, they can go from bad to worse in a hurry.

There are four stages of bedsores:

Stage 1 is the mildest stage of a bedsore, where the skin is red and sometimes painful. The skin is unbroken. When staff promptly and adequately treat a stage 1 bedsore, there will be no long-term damage.
Stage 2 is when the bedsore causes some break in the skin where there is an open wound. However, the damage will not be very severe. The resident should recover from a stage 2 bedsore within a few weeks if staff diligently treats it.
Stage 3 is when the bedsore goes through the skin and reaches the fat tissue. There is a much higher risk of infection, which is more of a long-term condition.
Stage 4 is the most severe type of bedsore. Here, the sore is so deep that it can reach the tendon, muscle, or bone. The gaping wound has a strong likelihood of becoming severely infected.

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Bedsores Can Become Infected and Life-Threatening

More serious bedsores can become infected. If the infection worsens, the resident can go into septic shock. Almost half of the seniors who develop sepsis from an infected bedsore will die from it. Even those who survive may shorten their remaining lifespan because the septic shock will cause lasting physical damage.

Bedsores do not go from stage 1 to stage 4 overnight. When the nursing home follows federal regulations, they will discover a bedsore shortly after it forms. Then, they will administer care to the area several times per day, washing it gently with water and keeping it covered with medicated gauze. A bedsore can heal quickly if the nursing home applies the proper care.

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Bedsores Are Avoidable and Should Never Become Infected

More serious pressure ulcers should not happen. First, the nursing home will prevent nearly all bedsores if they have a plan and follow it. Then, the nursing home should notice the resident’s pressure ulcer and immediately and consistently treat it. Bedsores only become infected when they are neglected and left untreated. A stage 4 bedsore or septic shock when the staff monitored and treated the resident is extremely rare.

Bedsores are a form of nursing home neglect and abuse. They are almost solely a matter of the quality of care (or lack thereof) in a nursing home. Up to one in every four nursing home residents will have bedsores.

How Nursing Home Neglect Can Cause Bedsores

Many contributing factors can lead to bedsores besides the resident being left in their bed or wheelchair all day without any rotation or changing of their position:

Residents who experienced recent weight loss are more likely to develop bedsores. When nursing homes do not adequately feed residents according to federal regulations, they will lose weight quickly.
Nursing homes also do not always give the residents fluids regularly enough, leading to drier skin.
Staff does not always change and clean incontinent residents, leading to worse skin conditions. Keeping skin clean is one of the most effective ways to prevent bedsores.

Bedsores are not just a result of an immobile resident. They also result from other forms of nursing home neglect.

Can You Sue a Nursing Home for Bedsore Injuries?

When your loved one has suffered a bedsore in a nursing home, your family can file a lawsuit against the facility for financial compensation. The nursing home may already face punishment for neglecting your loved one when they are subject to inspections. You can also hold them accountable, even when they have already been fined or cited for neglect.

When your loved one has suffered an injury in a nursing home, you should call an experienced nursing home abuse lawyer. We know how to investigate and get to the bottom of what happened. We will file a lawsuit on your behalf as your family seeks compensation for the suffering of your loved one.

Why You Need a Nursing Home Attorney

Here is how a nursing home attorney can help your family:

Work with your family to resolve any care issues with the nursing home if the issue is still ongoing
Help you report neglect and abuse to the relevant authorities
Investigate what happened to your loved one and whether the nursing home was to blame for it
Review your loved one’s medical and care records to pinpoint precisely where the nursing home made a mistake
File a lawsuit on your behalf seeking compensation from the nursing home
Negotiate a potential settlement if the nursing home wants to negotiate
Try your case in front of the jury if you cannot reach a settlement agreement

Nursing Home Neglect Lawsuits Stem from Negligence

A nursing home bedsore case is the same as any other type of personal injury lawsuit. The legal standard you must meet is proving that the nursing home was negligent. Your attorney will obtain evidence about how the nursing home failed in its legal duty to care for your loved one.

A reasonable nursing home will take steps to prevent bedsores in the first place. If the resident develops a pressure ulcer, the reasonable nursing home will provide regular care, doing everything it can to help the senior recover and keep the bedsore from becoming infected. Your attorney will demonstrate an overall pattern of neglect and poor care to show how the nursing home caused your loved one injury.

Proving that the nursing home was negligent is only part of the lawsuit process. Your family must get enough compensation to pay for what the nursing home did to your loved one. If your loved one survived their injuries, the nursing home will need to pay for all the damages that they did. The most significant part of nursing home neglect damages is often the pain and suffering that your loved one endured. Infected pressure sores can be pretty painful, and sepsis can cause severe medical effects and discomfort.

Wrongful Death Lawsuits for Bedsore Injuries

If your loved one died from a bedsore, as is often the case, your family can file a wrongful death lawsuit to seek compensation for the damages that you suffered from losing your family member.

You can seek compensation for pecuniary losses of your deceased family member. The nursing home will still need to pay for the ordeal to which they subjected your loved one because the estate can also file a survival action that will cover your loved one’s damages between the time of their injury and death.

Consult a Long Island Nursing Home Neglect and Abuse Attorney

The personal injury attorneys at Rosenberg & Gluck, LLP, know how to hold a nursing home accountable for what they did to your family member. The staff may not have listened to or cared for your loved one, but they will have to deal with your family now in court. We understand that families want justice for nursing home abuse and neglect, and we will aggressively hold the nursing home accountable.

To begin the process of accountability for the injuries to your loved one, you can call a Long Island bedsore attorney today at (631) 451-7900 or contact us online to schedule your free initial consultation. You can get justice when a nursing home has placed profits over your family member’s well-being.