Understaffing is the primary reason for nursing home abuse and neglect.
Nursing homes can be scary places. We place our loved ones in nursing homes everyday, and 40% of us will move into a nursing home at some point in our life. But day after day we here that another person has died in a nursing home because of abuse and neglect. With so many injuries, you’d expect that nursing home lawsuits would be easy business, but they’re not. Many lawyers struggle tremendously trying to prove their nursing home cases and end up settling on the cheap. The only ones who win in this scenario are the nursing homes who essentially rake in huge profits and pay a measly fine here and there.
So how do you prove a nursing home case?
Nursing Home Cases are Always Systems Cases
You’ve probably heard, “Truck crash cases aren’t just big car crash cases.” Why? Because of federal regulations governing trucking companies, and the big corporate, unsympathetic, insured defendants.
Nursing home cases are the same: they’re not just medical negligence cases with older people.
Nursing home cases are against big, dangerous, greedy, and insured (or asset-rich) corporations who put their profits ahead of resident safety in a way that would make the most cut-throat, for-profit hospital chain blush.
So if you’re litigating the occasional nursing home case focusing on a particular nurse or aide, or even a particular facility, you’re missing all the fun–and the case value, and the chance to make a big impact–by focusing on the wrong people.
We’ve never had a nursing home case that wasn’t a “systems” case. If you have, you likely either missed it, or you had a mediocre case.
This is just a small portion of the recent article by nursing home abuse lawyers Michael Hill and William Eadie published by the Ohio Association for Justice (OAJ). You can continue reading and download the entire article here.