Nursing Home Abuse and Neglect is particularly devastating because its victims are our relatives and friends who have reached a point in their lives where they are unable to take care of themselves; that’s why they are in nursing homes to begin with. Abuse and neglect can reduce people we remember as strong and independent, people we love, to shadows, when they are entitled to dignity and care.

This entitlement is recognized in Illinois’ Nursing Home Care Reform Act, which lists the rights of nursing home residents. Federal law lists additional rights. These laws provide an easier legal standard than medical negligence that we can use to safeguard our loved ones.

While we do everything we can to find competent and reliable – even luxurious – care facilities, too often our loved ones are given scant care or even ignored, more like inventory stacked in a warehouse than the loving, feeling people we care about.

When nursing home staff and owners fail to take even the basic care that promotes health and well being of their ill or elderly residents, these care recipients can suffer severe injury. Unsanitary conditions, over medication, unneeded restraints, sexual, physical and verbal abuse, or just being ignored can lead to bloody bed sores that reach to the bone, disease, malnutrition, broken limbs and ribs, falls. Residents, some feeble or having Alzheimer’s Disease, have wandered off while nursing home staff has watched television instead of their charges.

People have suffered and died because of the way they were treated.

While we can raise some of these issues under the Illinois Act, that law does not provide for wrongful death, so if someone dies as a result of neglect or abuse, a suit comes under the wrongful death act and must be treated like any other medical negligence case. In such cases, a doctor must review the records and conclude that the claim has merit.

While there are competent nursing homes, others support the stereotype that figures in television dramas and the common attitude that nursing homes, as a class, are places we don’t ever want to be.

So, when the actions of nursing home staff lead to injury or illness among residents, the nursing home is guilty of abuse. And making such abuse a particularly ugly category of medical malpractice is the fact that many victims, because they are weak or intimidated, can’t, or won’t, report their difficulties. If you suspect abuse or failure to meet the standards of the Nursing Home Care Reform Act, turning to a lawyer, such as The Kosner Firm, as soon as possible may lead to the correcting of these conditions and a more dignified life for the person you love, as well as to the prosecution of offenders.