Bed Sore Lawyer: Bedsores in Nursing Homes and Hospitals

My Family Member Developed a Bedsore:
Should I Call a Bed Sore Lawyer?

If nursing duties such as turning a patient, proper bathing and hygiene are not followed, a bedsore can result. Bed sores cause unnecessary pain and suffering. Untreated bed sores can result in sepsis and wrongful death. There is no excuse for allowing a bed sore to develop inside a facility. These pressure wound injuries develop from patient neglect.

If your loved one developed a bed sore inside a nursing home, assisted living facility or hospital, call our bed sore lawyers now, toll-free, at 1-888-375-9998.

At Senior Justice Law Firm, our lawyers focus on cases involving bedsore litigation. Call or chat with us now for a free bedsore case consultation.

Bedsores and pressure ulcers are a ‘never event’ in medicine. This means, they should never occur. Senior Justice Law Firm specializes in patient neglect cases against negligent nursing homes, assisted living facilities and hospitals.

The majority of our firm’s cases involve bed sore injuries. Let our years of bed sore lawsuit experience help maximize your recovery. Call or chat with our bedsore attorneys today to learn more about your legal rights, and how our law firm can help.

Attorneys Narrowly Focused on Litigating Bed Sore Injury Claims

Bedsores, also called pressure sores or decubitus ulcers, frequently occur in nursing homes and hospitals as a result of nursing negligence. Bed sore lawsuits are the most common injury claim we handle at Senior Justice Law Firm, and our lawyers have represented over 1,000 bed sore victims over the years. Bedsores are not an acceptable part of a hospitalization or nursing home residency.

If your loved one developed a bed sore inside a nursing home, assisted living facility or hospital, call us now toll-free at 1-888-375-9998 to speak with one of our bed sore lawyers about your legal options.

Your Legal Rights Following a Bed Sore Injury to a Loved One

When you learn your family member has developed a bed sore in a facility, take action right away. If you notice any pressure sores on your family member, you should notify the doctor and the head nurse immediately. Document the nursing home bed sore with pictures. Create a list of the nurses and doctors you have spoken with about the wound. If your loved one develops a bed sore inside a hospital, assisted living or nursing home, you should seek legal advice from one of our bed sore attorneys.

Medical facilities should be held responsible for these horrendous and preventable wounds. The law provides for an avenue of recovery through the civil justice system. This is called a bed sore neglect lawsuit, and this claim can be filed against the negligent nursing home or hospital where the bed sore developed.

How Do Bed Sores Form in Nursing Homes?

Lack of movement and improper hygiene are major factors in developing bed sores. Pressure sores result from restricted blood flow in a particular area, usually heels, buttocks, back and head. However, compromised blood flow does not excuse bed sores.

If the patient is not repositioned by nurses properly, bed sores or pressure ulcers develop. After a bed sore has developed, the medical condition of the patient and poor hygiene can hinder the healing process.  If a patient is left in their own urine in clothing or a bed, further underlying infections can result. The deteriorating skin can be permanently damaged. Additionally, bed sores are typically painful.

Regular movement of patients at scheduled times (at least every two hours) and properly checking to make sure that clothing and bedding are dry are the responsibility of the nursing home or hospital. If the facility is doing an adequate job of hiring and training personnel, these routine patient care techniques should be in place. Special pillows, cushions, air mattresses and other items can be used to reduce pressure on the skin and should be used for regularly for non-mobile patients.

Bedsores, Pressure Sores and Decubitus Ulcers

So What are Bedsores?

Bedsores are also known as pressure sores or pressure ulcers. They are caused by injury to the skin and the underlying tissues due to unrelieved pressure. When an at-risk patient cannot move themselves in bed on their own, the nursing home or hospital nurses must reposition the patient every 2 hours to offload pressure and prevent bedsores. If the facility staff is not doing this every 2 hours, this is an example of nursing neglect. Federal laws are in place to ensure and protect patients from this carelessness. However, bed sores are still rampant throughout long term care facilities, usually due to understaffed and overworked nurses.

Bed sores most often occur on bony areas of the body, which aren’t covered by fat or muscle. Common pressure ulcer areas are the buttocks, low back (sacrum), hips, tailbone, heels, and ankles. People suffering from immobilizing medical conditions and elderly people who struggle with movement are most at risk. Pressure ulcers usually suggest days of neglect in order to develop. Further, once a patient has a deep bed sore, the wound can be difficult to treat.

Untreated bedsores are very serious and can lead to severe infection.

5 Fast Facts About Facility-Acquired Bed Sores

1. Nursing homes and hospitals are legally required to track new and existing areas of skin breakdown.
2. Most insurers will not reimburse a facility for wound care on a bed sore developed in the facility. This is because these wounds are viewed as preventable if appropriate care is given.
3. Nursing homes are legally required to communicate the existence of skin breakdown and bed sores to the patient’s power of attorney.
4. Most patients that develop a bed sore die within one year of the wound.
5. The most common cause of death via bed sore is sepsis (wound infection).

Bed Sore Photos and Staging of Bedsores

Bed sore photos are shocking and revolting. Even with decades of combined experience handling these kinds of claims, our bed sore lawyers still are horrified at seeing photographs of the wounds.

Bedsore pictures usually show a gaping hole in the skin, typically on the backside (sacrum) or the heels. They are painful, unsightly, and can lead to deadly infections such as sepsis or MRSA.  Bed sores are staged based on severity from a Stage 1 to a Stage 4. A stage 1 bedsore is a smaller red spot, whereas a stage 4 bedsore is a severe, cavernous wound, which may be infected with osteomyelitis. Below are professional pressure injury illustrations which depict the various stages of bedsores. If you are unsure which stage bedsore your family member has developed, speak with our bedsore attorneys today so that we can obtain the relevant medical records and determine the stage of the wound.

Documenting your family member’s wound with photographs is crucial. They say a photograph is worth 1,000 words. This is true in bedsore neglect claims. Pictures of the wound are necessary to as prove 1) that the bedsore existed and 2) to date when the bedsore developed. Bedsore pictures can be used against the nursing home or hospital later in court. Never rely on the facility to document the bed sore with photographs! Even if you see the wound care team taking pictures of the pressure ulcer, do not assume that those photos will make it into the medical record. Be sure to document the wound yourself by taking your own photographs, which can serve as evidence later on in your nursing home abuse claim.

Bed Sore Statistics in Nursing Homes and Hospitals

According to the Centers for Disease Control, more than 10% of patients residing in nursing homes suffer from pressure sores.  Of those patients with bed sores, 50% of them were higher than a Stage II bedsore, which means that it was a severe pressure ulcer. Pressure ulcers are a ‘never event’ in hospitals and nursing homes. This means pressure sores should never occur inside a facility and there is usually no excuse for bedsore formation.

The most common victim of bedsores are patients over the age of 60 who have compromised mobility. When a patient has compromised mobility, it means that they cannot move or reposition themselves in bed. Statistically, bedsores occur far more often in nursing homes versus hospitals or in-home elder care. This is likely due to systemic understaffing in America’s nursing home industry. If there are not enough nurses working on a facility floor, not all the at-risk patients will be turned and repositioned. When patients are neglected and left lying in bed in their own urine and feces, infected bedsores develop. Although statistically most bed sore sufferers reside in nursing homes, hospital-acquired bedsores do occur and are usually due to patient neglect as well.

Common causes of pressure ulcers in long term care facilities include patient neglect, inattentive nurses failing to move the resident every 2 hours, caretaker understaffing and dehydration and malnutrition.

Families entrust the care of a family member to the facility, nursing staff, and healthcare providers to provide the best possible care for their loved ones on a daily basis. Bedsores take a while to develop. It is not something that happens overnight. These sores are clear indication that the facility is not providing basic care to their patients.

Shockingly, patients are more likely to develop pressure sores in today’s nursing homes and hospitals than at any other time. With budget cuts and realignments in the medical sector, facility nurses are understaffed. Nurses are also undertrained and doing jobs for which they are not qualified, resulting in inadequate care of patients, which is unacceptable. Studies such as those documented in the National Library of Medicine National Institution of Health stated that patients admitted to hospitals from a nursing home were more than five times more likely to have pressure sores.

What Does it Feel Like to Have a Bedsore?

After years of representing bedsore victims, we have spoken with many victims of painful bed sores. Patients have described a painful, infected bedsore as absolute misery. It may start out as a mild irritation, but it can soon develop into debilitating pain. This means that patient is never able to get comfortable and is in constant pain from the wound.

The underlying wound infection can also profoundly change a patient’s life. In some cases, the pressure wound can even be deadly.

Who is At Risk for Bed Sores?

As mentioned above, nursing home residents are more likely to develop bedsores than hospital patients. Potential risk boosters of bedsores in nursing homes and hospitals include:

• Aging – elderly people have thinner skin, this vastly increases their risk of getting ulcers.
• Can’t feel pain – some elderly people have nerve disorders that prevent them from feeling the pain and discomfort that lets a person know they need to change their position in bed.
• Incontinence – the moisture associated with incontinence can boost chances of developing pressure injuries. Urine and feces also add to the risk of infecting the pressure ulcer wound.
• Malnutrition – deficiencies in certain nutrients can skyrocket your chances of developing a bedsore and makes developed bedsores harder to treat.
• Diabetes or vascular disease – both make the first stages of bedsores occur faster and make existing bedsores harder to treat. However, vascular blood flow insufficiencies are not excuses for pressure ulcer development.
• Smoking – nicotine acts in a similar way to the above circulatory disease, restricting blood flow and not allowing proper circulation to the affected area.

How Does Nutrition Impact Bed Sores?

The medical community is in agreement that improper nutrition can contribute to bed sore development.

Malnutrition appears to be a common contributor to bedsore occurrence in nursing homes, but other less severe nutritional deficiencies can also make bedsores more common. This is why it is crucial that the nursing home staff carefully monitors the patient’s nutrition levels, in order to prevent skin breakdown. Repositioning a patient is not enough to prevent skin breakdown. The facility must ensure that the patient is getting appropriate nutrition and hydration as well.

A balanced diet can not only reduce the likelihood of bedsores developing, but also significantly improve healing times of existing bedsores.

The nutritional deficiencies that increase bedsore risk are:

• Protein
• Zinc
• Vitamin C

These increase your risk because they are crucial for the strength of your skin and your body’s ability to heal.

Try to make sure your family member is getting more of the following:

• Meat, eggs, and dairy – for protein and zinc
• Fruit & Vegetables – for vitamin C

If the patient is unable to eat solid foods, speak with the facility’s nutritionist about setting up feeding alternatives. A recent study shows the positive effect nursing home patients with bedsores experienced after undergoing a nutrition intervention. When the nutrition experts took control of the patients’ nutrition, bedsore healing rates were significantly higher. This was likely because they were getting enough of these nutrients compared to their previous nursing home diet.

Preventing Bed Sores in Nursing Homes

Preventing pressure sores in nursing homes and hospitals is a relatively straightforward task. If a nurse is on top of providing the required care to the patient, a bedsore will not form. Unfortunately, nursing homes often times fail reposition immobile individuals every 2 hours, fail to properly place cream on existing small pressure sores, and fail to give proper nutrition intervention to those at risk. This allows bedsores to form.

Here is a quick checklist that can be used to prevent bedsores in nursing homes, hospitals and assisted living facilities:

• Reposition the patient at least every two hours in bed and every 15 minutes in a wheelchair
• Place special creams on the bedsore to help the wound heal and stay clean
• Use a donut cushion when the patient is sitting in a chair or wheelchair
• Utilize a special air loss mattress to offload pressure of the affected area
• Use a wound vac on existing pressure ulcers
• If the wound is severe enough, plastic surgery can be performed to close off the wound and prevent further infection and deterioration

Pressure injury prevention is the responsibility of the facility. As a lay person, knowledge is power. The best thing to do is to equip yourself with the knowledge about bed sore prevention and communicate with the facility management so that they provide the appropriate standard of care to your family member. Remember, appropriate care is their responsibility, not yours.

What To Do When Caregivers Fail: Bed Sore Lawsuit

Pressure sore lawsuits are becoming common in the US, primarily because healthcare experts agree there is no reason for many bed sores to occur.

If a nursing home has a bedsore problem, there may be a larger facility-wide systemic patient neglect problem. If you have a potential bed sore lawsuit, contact an attorney focusing on elder abuse cases. Our bed sore lawyers have handled thousands of cases involving this specific kind of injury.

Bed Sore Neglect Lawsuit

Most bedsores develop due to negligence on the part of hospital or nursing home nurses. Tragically, this cycle continues because only 1 in 14 incidents of elder abuse in the U.S. actually get reported. This allows the negligent facilities to continue to neglect their patients, thereby creating more bedsores and resulting injuries.

Our bed sore lawyers have years of experience litigating bedsore negligence lawsuits. Our bed sore attorneys have recovered millions of dollars for our clients in bedsore cases. We understand how enraging a preventable pressure ulcer can be, especially considering the lethal health impact it can have on an elderly patient. We understand that these cases are about much more than just money; it is about justice.

Now Is the Time to Take Action

If you or a loved one are suffering from bedsores, take action. Don’t allow other patients in the facility to suffer the seemingly endless cycle of elder abuse. Be a voice for the voiceless and stand up to patient neglect.

Speak With a Compassionate Bed Sore Lawyer Now, For Free

Contact us now for your free case consultation at 1-888-375-9998.

Updated 5-19-2020