Nursing Home & Assisted Care Abuse

When New Yorkers place their elderly loved ones in nursing homes or assisted living facilities, they do so with the expectation that the care received will be exemplary. Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case. Rappaport, Glass, Greene and Levine have successfully represented clients who have had their loved ones abused and mistreated at nursing care facilities. We have secured compensation for victims of nursing home abuse, malnutrition, neglect, rape, and various other forms of wrongful treatment. If you feel that your loved one is not getting the treatment that they deserve, call Rappaport, Glass, Greene and Levine for a free legal consultation today.

Attorneys for New York City, Long Island and the Greater New York area

Nursing homes and assisted care facilities exist to care for the elderly. Designed to provide vital services to people who can no longer see to their own needs, they have instead become dumping grounds for seniors. Too often, seniors are the victims of neglect, abuse, filth and incompetence. In many cases, records are changed to conceal the indignities to which elderly people are subjected.

The list of abuses and substandard care that occur in nursing home and assisted living facilities can fill many volumes. Facility failures and the resulting tragic consequences to residents exist because too many facilities are more concerned with profits than with the people in their care. Below are just a few of the most pressing problems:

Bed Sores: Bed sores are skin ulcers that can sometimes go down to the bone. They are horribly painful and, once established, difficult to treat and cure. Insufficient staffing and inadequate training are the key causes of bed sores. When an elderly person develops bed sores, the chances are overwhelming that the causes are inadequate cleaning or attention.
Rape, Physical Abuse and Other Violence: The elderly are often placed at random with the mentally retarded, brain injured, or emotionally disturbed. Defenseless against these aggressive and often younger people, elderly residents have been raped, beaten, abused and even killed. Sadly, the majority of these incidents go unreported and unpunished.
Malnutrition: One of the most horrible things imaginable is death by starvation. Many elderly patients are unable to adequately feed themselves and need assistance in cutting and eating their food. In an effort to maximize profits, some facilities do not hire sufficient staff to properly feed residents. Sometimes, staff members, whether due to improper training or a lack of oversight and supervision, simply don’t take the time to see to it that a resident eats enough to avoid malnutrition.
Freezing in Winter, Stifling in Summer: The elderly are convenient victims. Taking advantage of the frequent inability of residents to voice complaints, facility operators maximize profits by keeping temperatures extremely low in the winter and extremely high in the summer. This can be torture for elderly people, who are especially vulnerable to temperature extremes.
High Turnover, Inadequate Training and Insufficient Staff: Many nursing home and assisted living facility employees are minimum wage workers with little training or experience. They have minimal incentive to provide quality care for the elderly. Often, there is simply not enough staff to perform even the most necessary functions, and the staff that is available is poorly trained. Overwhelmed by the workload, the turnover rate of these workers is inordinately high. Documented cases of patients left for days in their beds, sometimes in their own waste, are a frightening consequence of staffing failures, and yet another instance of facility operators putting profits before people.
Lack of Adequate Medical Care: Despite the declining health of nearly every nursing home and assisted living facility, there is only minimal access to professional medical care. Physicians and nurses have daunting patient loads which make it difficult, and in some cases, impossible to provide decent medical care. Sadly, residents are often medicated, not to treat them properly, but to keep them quiet.

In the face of such stunning indifference to this terrible crisis, the families of the elderly have only one place to turn to get results when their loved one has been mistreated, abused or wronged in an elderly facility: civil litigation. Indeed, deaths and injuries are rarely investigated by state officials until after a lawyer becomes involved in the case.

As a law firm that has carefully watched the failures of elder care institutions, RGG&L is determined to help New York families right the many wrongs inflicted upon their loved ones in nursing home and assisted living facilities. With Americans expected to live longer lives than ever before, all of us have a stake in ensuring that the facilities that care for the elderly and meet the highest standards of care, not just for our parents and grandparents, but also for ourselves.

If you suspect that a loved one is suffering from abuse or neglect in a nursing home or assisted living facility, RGG&L can help you take effective legal action that will ensure greater protection for your loved one. Contact us today.

Library for Nursing Home & Assisted Care Abuse:

Signs of Nursing Home Abuse
Description: As more elder New Yorkers require assisted living and nursing home services, it's important for loved ones to understand and recognize signs of assisted living and nursing home abuse. Read this document to get a brief summary of the signs of elder abuse in assisted living facilities.

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