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Assisted living facilities must provide a high standard of care to their residents. Not only do they need to provide residents with a comfortable place to live, they also need to keep residents safe and attend to each resident’s quality of life. Many assisted living facilities in Charleston, including popular residences such as Mt. Pleasant and The Palms, make sure their residents receive the high standard of care they both need and deserve.

In some cases, however, the staff at an assisted living facility may fail to provide adequate care, resulting in substantial injury to a resident. If you or a loved one suffered a serious injury due to the negligence of a Charleston assisted living facility, Hughey Law Firm can provide the legal assistance you need. Contact us today to learn more about your right to seek compensation for your injuries.

Charleston Assisted Living Facility Guide

Hughey Law Firm Helps Seniors Pursue the Compensation They Deserve

At Hughey Law Firm, we have helped many past clients obtain considerable settlements after suffering severe neglect in nursing homes and assisted living facilities.

Our past results include:

  • $225,000 awarded to the victim of a nursing home neglect claim.
  • $235,000 awarded in two different claims related to nursing home neglect.
  • $350,000 awarded to a victim of nursing home and hospital neglect.

Our past results cannot predict the compensation you will receive for the injuries you sustained due to neglect in an assisted living facility. But we have the experience necessary to provide you with comprehensive legal assistance to guide you through a claim against a negligent care provider. Contact our attorneys today to schedule a free case review to help you better understand the compensation you deserve for your injuries.

We’re Not Afraid to Take on the Biggest Assisted Living Facilities in the Area

If an assisted living facility injured you or your loved one, call us.

We’ve already won cases against all of these businesses:

Even if you don’t see the facility that injured you or your loved one on that list, call us. We know what it takes to investigate allegations of neglect and build a successful case against those and other assisted living facilities that have injured our clients—and we want to help you no matter where the abuse or neglect took place.

Types of Charleston Assisted Living Facility Claims

Most seniors move into an assisted living facility because they can no longer take care of themselves at home. They may need additional medical support and assistance, or they may need someone to check in on them periodically to ensure that nothing goes wrong. Failure to take care of those key details of care can cause medical complications and injuries. We describe some of the most common injuries related to nursing home neglect below.

Talk to our attorneys to learn more about whether you may have grounds for an assisted living facility claim, even if your injuries do not fall into one of these categories.

Negligence

Assisted living facilities, unlike nursing homes, usually cater to seniors who remain relatively independent. Like nursing homes, however, they must provide a high standard of care for the seniors living in the facility, as they assist them with the daily activities of living. Assisted living facilities may assist with personal care, medication management, help with meals, transportation and mobility assistance, housekeeping, and home maintenance and repairs.

In an overworked assisted living facility, however, some of these tasks may fall through the cracks. Negligence can occur in several ways. Staff members may not offer a high standard of care to residents in the assisted living facility, neglecting to come and help them with self-care tasks, for example, or rushing through those tasks and only taking care of the basics instead of providing residents with the high standard of care they both need and deserve. Others may neglect certain residents altogether. Failure to regularly check in on a resident can lead to a resident suffering illness or injury without anyone knowing.

Negligence can also lead to a host of other challenges, including:

  • Poor medication management. A resident who requires medications to manage existing health conditions may need assistance from facility staff to take those medications as prescribed. Chronic conditions like diabetes, heart disease, or lung disease all require regular medication management to keep symptoms in check. Sometimes staff doesn’t manage residents’ medications properly, causing breakthrough symptoms of chronic conditions. In other cases, missing doses of a medication can lead to acute health conditions, including heart attack or stroke.
  • Dehydration. Some residents require regular check-ins to make sure that they drink enough water each day. Residents with Alzheimer’s and dementia, in particular, may forget to drink enough without reminders. Chronic dehydration can cause severe health problems. If not addressed, chronic dehydration can also lead to death.
  • Malnutrition. Many assisted living facilities provide food for residents who no longer have the ability or desire to cook on their own. Residents often rely on facility meals as their sole source of nutrition each day. If the staff fails to prepare and deliver healthy or consistent meals, a resident may start to show signs of malnutrition, including a lack of energy, overall weakness, and a depressed immune system that may leave the resident unable to fight off infections.
  • Poor hygiene. Neglect of assisted living facility residents can lead to an overall lack of hygiene. Residents may not receive the assistance they need with bathing or changing clothes. Over time, poor hygiene can lead to an increased risk of infection, skin deterioration, sores, and a host of other health challenges.

Slip and Fall Accidents

Some residents are at significant risk of slipping and falling, especially immediately after certain medical procedures. Following those procedures, they may need additional care and observation. Nursing homes may use bed alarms to inform staff if a resident tries to get out of bed when they are at a serious fall risk. Assisted living facilities are less likely to provide that level of supervision for residents.

Assisted living facilities must also carefully maintain their premises to reduce the risk of serious accidents. Since seniors are generally at risk of experiencing serious injuries if they slip and fall, assisted living facilities must make sure that they keep walkways safe. There should be no cords across the floor or carpets that could bunch up underfoot, no slick walkways, and no poorly repaired flooring or debris on the floor that could cause someone to slip. In addition, assisted living facility owners must take care of basic maintenance of the premises, especially stairs, ramps, and handrails.

Slip and fall accidents can lead to serious injuries for assisted living facility residents. Some common slip and fall injuries include:

  • Broken bones, including hips, which can lead to a host of health complications and may end in death for a senior;
  • Traumatic brain injury;
  • Spinal cord injuries; and
  • Severe contusions.

Bedsores

In some cases, assisted living facility residents cannot get out of bed on their own. After suffering severe injuries, they may need to spend time in bed while they heal. Assisted living facilities may also offer step-up care services that allow residents to receive additional care if their health deteriorates, including services for bed-bound residents.

A bed-bound resident must move regularly to decrease the risk of bedsores. Bedsores, also known as pressure ulcers, develop when a bed- or wheelchair-bound person does not shift positions often enough, leading to consistent pressure over a bony area of the body for an extended time. Pressure ulcers may also develop due to friction against a person’s skin when they move.

In their early stages, pressure ulcers generally result in redness and soreness around the injury site. As they progress, however, damage can move into deeper tissue, leading to open sores and causing immense pain and sometimes leading to a serious, even deadly, infection.

Seeking Compensation From a Charleston Assisted Living Facility

If you or someone you love experienced a serious injury because of negligence at a Charleston assisted living facility, you may pursue compensation by calling us. At Hughey Law Firm, we work with our clients to identify all parties that may share liability for their injuries.

Most often, the assisted living facility bears liability for injuries sustained because of negligence by facility staff. However, in some cases, the assisted living facility may bring in care providers from outside the facility to help manage resident care, which can add liable parties to a case.

For example, if the assisted living facility uses a staffing agency, and the staffing agency sends staff members with a known history of neglect, the staffing agency may share liability for any injuries suffered by the residents because of that neglect. In addition, if an accident occurs due to the negligence of a vendor or contractor on the property, such as a slip and fall accident due to construction debris, those entities may bear liability for injuries caused by their negligence.

At Hughey Law Firm, we carefully investigate all elements of your accident to better understand your claim and help you prepare to seek compensation. In many cases, we can identify more than one entity that may have contributed to the injury you suffered, which may increase the compensation you ultimately receive for your injuries.

The Compensation You Can Claim Following Charleston Nursing Home Negligence

For many seniors who suffered severe negligence at the hands of an assisted living facility, the compensation they can receive through an assisted living claim proves critical in helping them rebuild their lives. Contact Hughey Law Firm to learn more about the specific compensation you should expect to receive following an act of nursing home negligence.

The compensation you ultimately receive will depend on several key factors, including the extent of the injuries you suffered due to the company’s negligence. However, compensation usually falls under the same general categories.

Compensation for Medical Expenses

Medical expenses often make up the bulk of the financial cost associated with assisted living facility negligence. Depending on the type of negligence you or your loved one suffered and the injuries you sustained because of the accident, you may spend a long time in the hospital, where medical bills can mount quickly.

You may need to pay for emergency medical care or the cost of ongoing medical treatment for serious injuries sustained due to the provider’s negligence. For example, victims who break a hip in a fall may need to undergo surgery and extensive rehabilitation. All of those costs can add up quickly.

The Cost of Moving to a New Facility

You may choose to move to a new facility after your accident for several reasons. First and foremost, you may no longer feel safe in your current facility or experience anxiety when you think about leaving your care in the hands of those same individuals.

In many cases, that facility may not offer the level of care you need because of the injuries you sustained. For example, many seniors who suffer malnutrition and dehydration over a long time may not fully regain their health and may need to move to a new facility. You can claim compensation for that move and the increased expense associated with that facility as part of your Charleston assisted living claim.

Compensation for Pain and Suffering

Neglect in an assisted facility does not just cause physical pain. It can also cause severe emotional anguish, especially for seniors who feel abandoned by their caregivers or who struggle with the long-term impacts of their injury. In addition to pursuing compensation for your financial losses related to the neglect, you can choose to pursue compensation for the pain and suffering you faced due to those acts of negligence.

Charleston Assisted Living Facility Lawsuit FAQs

Do you have additional questions about your right to compensation following severe negligence at the hands of an assisted living facility? Take a look at the FAQ below.

1. Why does assisted living facility neglect occur?

Charleston assisted living facilities, like assisted living facilities and nursing homes across the country, often struggle with maintaining adequate staffing. Lack of adequate staffing can pose challenges for caregivers working in that facility. In some cases, new caregivers may not receive proper training and onboarding before they must take care of residents on their own. In other cases, caregivers may simply not have enough time in their shifts to take care of the needs of all the residents in the facility.

Caregivers may also lack clear instructions or record-keeping directions, which can make it very difficult for them to keep track of the needs of their residents. In addition, some caregivers may simply become tired of their job and fail to do it well, especially with lax supervision. Due to these challenges, assisted living facility residents may not receive the standard of care they expect.

Regardless of the reason for assisted living facility neglect, however, the facility will bear liability if neglect injured a resident. If the facility lacks adequate staff or does not provide adequate training, it will face liability for neglect suffered by its residents.

2. A representative from the assisted living facility contacted me to discuss my claim. Should I talk to them?

Make sure you have contacted a personal injury lawyer before communicating with the assisted living facility. Often, the assisted living facility’s representative will try to get you to say something that could reduce the facility’s responsibility. For example, the representative might try to get you to say that you asked their caregivers not to provide care for you during a certain time, or that you may have contributed to your own slip and fall accident by going out while feeling wobbly or medically unstable.

Not only that, the representative may try to offer you a settlement right off the bat. That offer rarely reflects the compensation you really deserve for the injury. The facility’s insurance company, however, will pressure you to take the offer, sometimes telling you they won’t offer as much in the future if you don’t take the settlement right away.

An attorney can make sure that you understand the full compensation you deserve for the injuries you sustained because of the assisted living facility’s negligence so you do not inadvertently accept less than you deserve under pressure from the facility or its insurance company. The attorney can also help negotiate on your behalf and give you more information about what you should say and how you should communicate with the facility to preserve your claim.

3. How long does it take to settle an assisted living facility negligence claim?

You should expect it to take time to settle an assisted living facility claim. Not only will your attorney need considerable time to investigate your claim and get a better idea of how much compensation you deserve, the assisted living facility may launch its own investigation into your injuries to understand how you sustained them and their severity. It may do that more to reduce its liability than to prevent future accidents or delay paying you the damages you deserve.

In addition, your attorney may recommend waiting until your doctor can predict how fully you will recover from the injuries you sustained before moving forward with a Charleston assisted living claim. For example, many seniors never recover the ability to walk following a broken hip. Seniors who sustain other injuries or illnesses may lose significant mobility or have ongoing, long-term pain. Without knowing how fully you will recover from your injuries, you may not know how much compensation you really deserve for your losses.

Finally, you will need time to negotiate with the insurance company that covers the assisted living facility, or with the assisted living facility itself, to reach an agreement regarding the compensation you ultimately receive. You may need to go through multiple rounds of negotiation before arriving at an agreement that fits your needs.

4. Does assisted living facility negligence require a criminal investigation?

In some cases, including severe or long-term abuse or neglect of assisted living facility residents, the authorities may need to investigate. Sometimes, the caregivers who neglected or abused residents may face criminal charges. However, not all examples of assisted living facility negligence will result in criminal charges.

Suppose, for example, that you suffered a slip and fall due to wires across a hallway in your facility. Negligence might entitle you to compensation, but would not require a criminal investigation. On the other hand, if you suffer an injury as part of a larger problem of abuse or neglect in a facility, and a criminal investigation does result, your attorney may use the results of that investigation as part of your Charleston assisted living claim.

5. What should I do if I suspect that a loved one has suffered neglect in an assisted living facility?

Often, friends and family members notice signs of neglect before the injured individual says anything about it. Sometimes, seniors feel ashamed to outright admit that they have suffered neglect at the hands of assisted living facility staff. They may feel reluctant to ask for help or they can’t communicate well enough to describe their situation. In other cases, seniors may not realize how much neglect they have suffered or loved ones may note signs of neglect throughout the facility.

If you suspect that your loved one has suffered neglect in an assisted living facility, make sure you take the right steps to protect your loved one.

You should:

  • Collect evidence of the neglect your loved one suffered. Before reporting neglect to the nursing home or assisted living facility, start by collecting evidence of the neglect your loved one has suffered. Take photos of any obvious evidence, including injuries. Of course, if your loved one has sustained serious injuries, prioritize seeking medical attention immediately.
  • Make sure your loved one receives any needed medical treatment. Encourage your loved one to pursue medical assistance for any serious injuries as soon as possible, whether that means seeing a doctor at the assisted living facility or pursuing treatment from an outside care provider. Make sure to document any injuries and keep track of medical bills associated with those procedures.
  • Notify the assisted living facility. Make sure the assisted living facility knows about any potential neglect or injuries your loved one may have suffered. Sometimes, assisted living facility staff may not know about the neglect of specific individuals or by specific employees, and they may act quickly to correct it once they receive appropriate notification.
  • Contact an experienced assisted living facility neglect attorney. An attorney can help give you an idea of what compensation your loved one may deserve for neglect by assisted living facility staff. An attorney can also advise you about the next steps you may need to take, from how to handle moving your loved one to a new facility, if needed, to how to handle negotiations with the assisted living facility staff, if necessary.

6. If my loved one suffered neglect in an assisted living facility, does the assisted living facility have to pay for increased costs associated with a new facility?

If your loved one requires a higher standard of care than the current assisted living facility because of neglect suffered at that facility, it may owe you for those increased costs. However, the facility will not pay the increased cost associated with that care directly. Rather, your attorney will work with you to include those costs as part of your Charleston assisted living claim.

7. Can I file a Charleston assisted living claim on behalf of a loved one who has suffered neglect in an assisted living facility?

In most cases, the injured party will need to manage the Charleston assisted living claim, including deciding whether to pursue compensation for injuries caused by an assisted living facility’s negligence. However, in some cases, you may have grounds to file a Charleston assisted living claim on your loved one’s behalf.

These situations include:

  • You have power of attorney for your loved one. If you hold power of attorney for a loved one who has suffered neglect in an assisted living facility, you can pursue a Charleston assisted living claim on your loved one’s behalf. An attorney can help you decide what steps to take next and how to manage your loved one’s claim.
  • Your loved one died from injuries sustained due to assisted living facility negligence. If your loved one died because of assisted living facility negligence, you may have grounds to pursue a wrongful death claim for your family’s loss. In general, the closest family members to the deceased have the right to file a wrongful death claim following instances of serious neglect that result in death. The deceased’s spouse will have the first right to file a wrongful death claim, followed by any living children. If the deceased has neither spouse nor children, the deceased’s estate or nearest family members may, in some cases, have the right to file a wrongful death claim.

8. Will I have to go to court to settle my Charleston assisted living facility negligence claim?

Most of the time, the assisted living facility will try to settle out of court, if possible. Frequently, going to court significantly increases the liable party’s legal fees, so that entity will try to avoid going to court if possible. If your claim must go to court, however, an attorney can present your case and establish the compensation you deserve for your injuries.

Did you or someone you love suffer serious injuries due to the negligence of an assisted living facility?

Hughey Law Firm has helped many of our past clients obtain better results from their claims against assisted living facilities and others whose negligence contributed to a resident’s injury.

We can:

  • Investigate your claim. Often, investigating an assisted living negligence claim involves keeping track of many details, from reviewing the circumstances that caused your injuries to investigating the assisted living facility that may have committed those acts of negligence. We will also look over the details of your medical records to make sure we fully understand the details of your injuries.
  • Make sure you understand the compensation you deserve. Many seniors who have experienced neglect in an assisted living facility do not know how to calculate the compensation they deserve for the injuries they sustained. Without the help of an experienced attorney, seniors may unknowingly accept a low settlement offer because the insurance company that covers the assisted living facility tries to take advantage of them or fails to offer the compensation they really deserve for those injuries. An experienced attorney can explain the rights of assisted living facility residents, giving them an idea of the compensation they should expect and helping them make informed decisions about whether or not to accept a particular settlement offer.
  • Help negotiate on your behalf. Negotiations with an insurance company in the aftermath of a serious accident can lead to immense stress for many seniors, especially if they have suffered serious injuries and have medical complications to deal with in addition to their assisted living claim. At Hughey Law Firm, we can take over negotiations on behalf of our clients, reducing their stress levels and providing them with the support they need during every step of the claims process. If the claim does need to go to court, we represent our clients and present their claims in the best light possible to help maximize the compensation they can ultimately receive for their injuries.

After suffering neglect, a slip and fall, or bedsores in a Charleston assisted living facility, you may need an attorney to help you move forward with a Charleston assisted living claim. Contact Hughey Law Firm today at (843) 881-8644 for your free consultation.