Nursing Home Abuse in Blake at Carnes Crossroads
Assisted living facilities, like Blake at Carnes Crossroads, often provide assisted living, memory care, and independent living programs. While living in their own apartments, residents can choose the amount of care they need from staff. High-end facilities, like Blake, say they provide customized care for each resident to ensure that they meet the needs of every resident.
What they claim and what they provide, however, can diverge radically. When that happens, leaving you or a loved one betrayed and injured physically, emotionally, or financially, don’t hesitate to call the Hughey Law Firm for help.
Blake’s assisted living program says it provides members with chef-prepared meals, physical and occupational therapy if needed, salon services, massage therapy services, and activity and social programs.
The independent living program says it provides chef-prepared meals, weekly housekeeping, basic cable and Wi-Fi, a fitness center, a beauty salon, a library, a computer room, daily activities, community outings, transportation, and an emergency response system.
The memory care program says it provides residents with specially designed floor plans, a monitoring system configured to each resident’s behavioral patterns, customized wellness programs, and customized amenities.
That’s the dream they offer to our elderly loved ones. In reality, Hughey Law Firm has successfully pursued claims against this facility on behalf of clients injured there. If Blake at Carnes Crossroads injured you or a loved one, we know how to fight back against them.
Issues in Assisted Living Facilities
Because assisted living facilities provide many services for their residents, accidents can and do happen. Below, we discuss some of the most common issues that arise in these types of facilities.
Trip or Slip and Fall Accidents
Residents frequently fall in nursing homes and assisted living facilities. Falls can inhibit mobility, result in severe injuries, and even cause death. Assisted living facilities must take care to keep furniture and other items out of common walking paths and to ensure that residents can see the signs for wet floors.
If the facility uses carpets, such as those you find at the entrance to keep from tracking water, snow, and mud through the facility, they should lay flat on the floor so as not to cause a tripping hazard.
If a loved one tripped or slipped and fell at an assisted living facility, your loved one may have grounds to take legal action against the facility.
Medication Errors
When a nursing home or assisted living facility takes responsibility for a patient’s medications, it could result in medication errors, including:
- Reading the prescription wrong—giving too much or too little of the medication.
- Mixing up medications for different residents.
- Doctors prescribing medications that interfere with other medications already prescribed to the resident.
Medication errors could range from minor issues to death, depending on the error and the resident’s overall health.
Malnutrition
If a facility lacks adequate staff, patients could receive a diminished level of care, including failing to ensure that patients get the hydration and nutrition they require. This inadequate care could lead to severe medical issues. While Blake provides chef-prepared meals tailored to a resident’s dietary needs, if the resident does not eat, and the staff does not catch it, it could lead to a personal injury claim.
If the staff errs and creates a meal for one resident but serves it to another resident who has an allergy to the food or otherwise shouldn’t eat it, this mistake could lead to medical issues. For example, if the staff feeds a diabetic patient sweet tea several times a day, it could exacerbate the resident’s diabetes.
Poor nutrition could also lead to other injuries, such as pressure sores and other health issues.
Failure to Supervise Residents
Residents may suffer traumatic injuries while living in assisted living facilities if the staff members fail to provide adequate supervision. While residents have more independence than those in nursing homes or memory care programs, all residents require some level of supervision to ensure their safety.
Understaffed assisted living facilities might not check on a resident as often as needed. If the resident does sustain an injury, it might go undetected for hours without adequate supervision, which can lead to more severe injuries and even death.
Wrongful Death
Because elderly individuals, particularly those living in nursing homes, face a high risk of injury and illness, something minor could result in death. In situations where a resident experienced mistreatment or neglect, and those negligent actions or inactions contributed to your loved one’s death, you could take legal action against the nursing home or assisted living facility.
Signs of Abuse, Neglect, or Mistreatment
Your loved one might not tell you that he or she has experienced mistreatment or neglect due to fear of retribution. When you visit, always pay attention to your loved one’s physical and mental condition.
Signs of nursing home or assisted living facility abuse might include:
- The resident becomes withdrawn.
- Unexplained cuts, bumps, and bruises.
- The resident, who previously always looked forward to hugs and closeness, does not accept hugs and/or will not let you get close.
- Weight loss.
- The resident refuses to leave the room or get out of bed.
- The resident refuses to eat or drink.
Recoverable Damages
If a loved one sustained injuries in an assisted living facility, he or she could recover economic damages and non-economic damages. Often, your loved one will not alert you to the mistreatment, so family members must keep an eye out for signs of neglect and/or abuse.
Depending on the severity of the abuse, mistreatment, and/or neglect, your loved one could recover:
- Special damages, or economic damages. These have a monetary value and include past and future medical expenses, replacement or repair of destroyed or damaged personal property, and funeral, burial, and/or cremation expenses. If the assisted living facility resident works, even part-time, he or she could also recover lost wages.
- General damages, or non-economic damages. These damages do not have a monetary value. They include pain and suffering, emotional distress, loss of quality of life, loss of companionship, loss of use of a body part or bodily function, amputation, excessive scarring, and disfigurement.
- Punitive damages. If the assisted living facility engaged in grossly negligent or intentional conduct, your loved one could recover punitive damages. Unlike economic damages and non-economic damages, which courts order to make the victim whole again, courts order punitive damages to punish defendants and to deter future similar behavior.
If you believe that your loved one might have experienced mistreatment, neglect, or abuse while in Blake at Carnes Crossroads or any other long-term care facility, contact the Hughey Law Firm for a free consultation. You can reach us by phone at (843) 881-8644. We’ve recovered millions of dollars in compensation for people just like you. We’re ready right now to listen to your story and see what we can do to help you.
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