40% OF COVID-19 DEATHS MAY BE CAUSED BY NURSING HOME GROSS NEGLIGENCE & MISCONDUCT
It was recently reported that more than 40% of coronavirus deaths in the state are linked to nursing homes and long-term care facilities. A large proportion of the over 10,000 people that have died are elderly or physical and mentally disabled people.
As reported, approximately 1 in 13 people who were in long-term care when the Covid-19 outbreak began have been infected and died. Many employees and staff members of nursing homes have been infected and died as well.
Attorneys William R. Lane & Alexandra Loprete have made it their goal to hold these nursing homes accountable for their grossly negligent and willful misconduct.
Elderly and disabled residents of nursing homes and long-term care facilities are among the most vulnerable members of society. Many have compromised immune systems and underlying medical conditions that greatly increase their risk of infection.
The grossly negligent conduct of nursing homes in failing to isolate sick patients, forcing symptomatic employees to come to work, and failing to strictly follow infection protocols has foreseeably resulted in avoidable harm on a massive scale.
The harms nursing home and long-term care residents have endured are not to be taken lightly. They include preventable and undignified death, extreme pain and suffering residents are forced to endure alone, being left for days without enough food, water, or assistance going to the bathroom or being changed.
Such deficiencies in care easily lead to the development of other painful life-threatening conditions, such as pressure ulcers, avoidable falls, dehydration, malnutrition, infection, and other fatal conditions that go undiagnosed.
Perhaps most troubling is that thousands of the elderly and infirm were completely shut-out from their families and had no way to be involved in their own medical care decisions. Many were left to die alone in what are being described as squalid conditions. Such indignity should not be acceptable.
Many have blamed nursing homeowners and administrators for failure to follow infection protocol, failure to be transparent with reporting cases, not communicating the problem and not tackling it head on. Many others believe the state has failed to protect its most vulnerable citizens by not promptly and fully performing inspections and investigations into long term care facilities.
It is no secret that long before the Covid-19 spread, many nursing homes and long-term care facilities had obvious shortcomings when it came to controlling the spread of infections.[1]According to the CDC, before Covid-19, one million to three million serious infections occur every year in nursing homes and other long-term-care facilities, and as many as 380,000 people die of those infections.
Many nursing homes are understaffed, and the staff they do have is overworked, underpaid, and not properly trained in infection prevention and control protocols. They fail to provide their employees with adequate resources to allow them to respond to the threat of infection appropriately, including failure to timely provide PPE, failure to properly isolate sick and symptomatic residents, failure to test residents and employees, failure to provide timely medical care or transfer to hospitals, and failure to strictly enforce infection protocols.
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Such failures should not go unaddressed. If you or a loved one has sustained harm due at the hands of a nursing home, you may have the legal right to pursue compensation. Contact an attorney at O’Connor Parsons Lane & Noble for a free consultation regarding nursing home abuse, neglect, or gross misconduct.
[1] https ://www.cdc.gov/longtermcare/index.html.
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