Nursing Home Fall Lawsuits

Nursing home falls and bedsores are the two most common causes of nursing home lawsuits in Maryland. Eldercare facilities consistently ignore that overwhelming evidence of risk to elders and fail to either implement a fall risk protocol, or they ignore the protocols in place.

In our mind, the key nursing home fall statistic is that one-third of nursing home residents who are admitted to a hospital after a fall dies within one year. Even if the patient does not die in the hospital, the one-year mortality rate is 22%. It is not hyperbole to say that the risk of a serious hospital fall can be graver than cancer or heart disease diagnosis.

If heart disease or cancer could be caused by the failure to take simple precautions, you can bet our nursing homes will devise and implement to the letter quality systems to reduce the risk. But when it comes to falls, nursing homes consistently ignore the overwhelming evidence of the risks and what can be done to mitigate those risks. Can you eliminate all nursing home falls? No. But the vast majority are caused by nursing homes' failure to elevate the care to the level of risk.

• Settlement value of nursing home fall cases
• Nursing home settlement values in Maryland

A nursing home is not a fast food restaurant. People live 24 hours a day in nursing homes. These facilities promise to give our elderly with adequate care and assure them that they will keep them safe and treat them with respect.

Many of these obligations are set out in federal law under the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1987 (OBRA). The OBRA regulations are a national standard that is reiterated in Maryland law. This law requires that upon admission, the nursing home must fully assess the patient's condition, functional capacity, and needs. This assessment will determine the resident's risk for falls. Assessment guidelines include a complete review of the patient's medical history, recent hospitalizations, medications, visual or hearing deficits, lower limb joint function, gait and balance, cognition, continence, and neurological and cardiovascular examinations. If the resident is found to be at heightened risk, an individualized strategy must be designed for that patient.

Nursing homes often fail to develop the right fall prevention protocol for its residents. But a more frequent mistake is failing to reevaluate the patient when a new assessment is warranted and incorporate these developments into a new plan. The assessment for a resident when they enter the facility is of little use five years later.

In sum, the standard of care for a nursing home requires that residents be fully assessed and reassessed for his risk of falls and that appropriate protocols in place to prevent falls. This requires that every nursing home employee is trained and qualified to recognize those residents at risk for falls and that the facility ensures that each resident receives adequate supervision and assistance to prevent falls.

The starting point has to be every resident is a fall risk. The medical literature has found that the two biggest risk factors for falls are age and cognitive impairment. Other risk factors include being female, history of falls, arthritis, obesity, high or low blood pressure, Parkinson's disease, dehydration, lower extremity weakness, balance problems, and psychotropic drug use.

There are many tools nursing homes can use to mitigate fall risk. You can find a list of some of these tools here. But the important thing is that these methods work if someone cares enough to figure out what the patient needs. This is why the standard for fall prevention mandates that nursing and other staff systematically reevaluate the effectiveness of the measures taken and devise new ones in the face of new facts.

These are nursing home cases. They are not slip and fall claims. If you try these case as slip and fall cases, you are going to get slip and fall sized verdicts. If you try the case as a nursing home case and you focus on the safety regulation violations, their failure to meet the community's standards for the level of care our seniors deserve, and the nursing home's refusal to take responsibility, you will get a much different settlement or verdict.

There are some nursing home fall suits that have been filed in Maryland in 2017 along with the allegations in the complaint:

• Green v. Encore: Patient recovering from a fall has another fall in an Ellicott City nursing home and breaks her hip which causes her death.
• Skakra v. FutureCare: Woman has 15 falls in 20 months at a FutureCare facility in Arnold, Maryland.

These are some of the nursing home fall lawsuits that have been filed in 2016:

• Tarleton v. Glen Burnie Health and Rehabilitation Center: A resident fall, breaking his hip. Like many serious fall victims, he dies a week later.
• Eichelberger v. Emerge: Nursing home fall wrongful death case. The family's lawsuit claims that having an appropriate fall risk plan in place would have prevented the death.
• Young v. Good Samaritan Hospital: This is not a nursing home case but the same paradigm applies. In this case, the question is whether having a small woman discharge a 300-pound man was appropriate. The man suffered an awful fracture and died a month later.
• Ballard v. Aurora Senior Living of Manokin: Resident fractures her hip on the way to the bathroom. Was there a plan in place to take the resident to the bathroom every two hours? Should they have been such a policy given the resident's fall risk?

Have you or a loved one suffered as the result of the negligence of a doctor, hospital, or nursing home? Our law firm, Miller & Zois, has a long history of getting results in serious injury and death cases in Maryland, earning substantial verdicts and settlements. Call Miller & Zois today to speak to a medical negligence attorney who can help you, at (800) 553-8082, or get a free online case review.

• Settlement Value of Nursing Home Fall Lawsuits
• A nursing home fall lawsuit filed in Rockville in 2018 after the fall of a 100-year-old woman at Brightview Fallsgrove
• A nursing home fall case in P.G. County in February 2018 after a fall caused a fractured hip and wrist
• February 2018 fall lawsuit against FutureCare after an unsupervised woman fractured her femur.
• Nursing home fall lawsuit filed against Villa Rosa Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Prince George's County filed just a few weeks before this lawsuit in January 2018
• Another January 2018 nursing home fall case against FutureCare. This is the rare case the focus of the case is more on generalized bad care than specific negligence that caused a specific injury.
• Another January 2018 case. Seriously. This one is against Stella Maris.
• The preceding FutureCare case was in a nursing home that is really struggling in terms of Medicare ratings. This lawsuit is against Encore is Ellicott City, which is a beautiful nursing home that gets great reviews.
• Another FutureCare fall case in Anne Arundel County, this one allegedly caused the patient's death
• Neck fracture nursing home fall case in 2016 against Genesis in Montgomery County
• Another claim against Genesis, this time at a Baltimore County facility where the woman fell and broke her leg. The woman died shortly thereafter of unrelated causes
• Somerset County nursing home slip and fall case at Manokin Manor by a woman who came to the facility after a stroke and extreme delirium
• Another very rural Maryland nursing home fall case, this one against GoldenLiving Center in Allegany County
• Knee injury nursing home fall suit against Kensington Healthcare Center in Montgomery County
• A Glen Burnie wrongful death fall case
• You do not seem many nursing home lawsuits against small nursing homes. This case is an exception, a wrongful death fall case from a hip fracture in Baltimore County.