Evaluating The Nursing Home Case: The Pressure Ulcer Case

Ben Gideon recently published an article on how to identify and evaluate a nursing home case involving pressure ulcers.  Below is an excerpt.  To read the full article, click here: http://www.bermansimmons.com/article_detail.php?id=67

 

Here’s the scenario. Susan is your long-time client.  She is a pleasant woman in her fifties.  One day she comes to see you and tells you that about eight months ago, she made the difficult decision to admit her mother to a nursing home.  Before that, mom had been living independently in her own apartment.  Mom was doing alright, but then suffered a minor stroke, fell and broke her leg.  After that, she could no longer get around or to the bathroom by herself and needed help rehabilitating her leg.  Her heart condition was not life-threatening, but after the stroke, her mental health deteriorated and she was often confused and disoriented. She needed more care and supervision than Susan and her family could provide on their own.  Susan located a facility that accepted Medicare and advertised “24-hour” skilled-nursing care, and she made arrangements for her mother’s admission.

 

Less than eight months later, Susan’s mother died as a result of cardiac shock triggered by a bacterial infection that spread to her bloodstream.  After spiking a temperature, the nursing home transferred Susan to the local hospital.  For the first time, Susan saw a baseball-sized gaping hole of rotting flesh all the way to the bone on her mother’s buttocks.  This was determined to be the site of the infection that led to her mother’s death. 

 

Susan was shocked.  She had visited her mother almost every day, and, although her mother’s confusion continued to worsen, there were no signs of deterioration in her mother’s health until the abrupt end.

 

Susan comes to you now looking for answers.  Her anger at the nursing home is exceeded only by her own feeling of guilt for placing her there.  She wants to know if she can make a claim against the facility.

 

To answer Susan’s question requires an understanding of (1) what a pressure ulcer is and why it occurs; (2) the laws and regulations pertaining to pressure ulcers that apply to skilled nursing facilities; and (3) the facts that culminated in her mother’s death.