Proving nursing home abuse through comprehensive medical record review

Proving Nursing Home Abuse through Comprehensive Medical Record Review

Proving nursing home abuse is difficult because medical record review to prove the injury or neglect would involve voluminous medical records.

Medical Record Review

CDC statistics reveal that there are about 1.4 million seniors living in over 15, 700 nursing home facilities across the nation. Nursing homes across the United States are required by federal as well as state laws to ensure proper attention and care to each and every resident. For instance, they are required to screen the residents for the risk of falls through a fall-risk assessment.

Unfortunately, these requirements are not met at some facilities that result in harm to the inmates. Representative cases that involve personal injury claims include failing to follow fall prevention guidelines for a patient, failing to recognize signs and symptoms of an ongoing infection, failing to properly rotate a patient who is confined to the bed, failing to follow explicit nutrition guidelines for a patient and failing to provide appropriate supervision to Alzheimer’s/dementia patients.

It is rather challenging to prove a nursing home abuse or neglect case mainly because many patients injured in nursing homes may have been living there for several years and medical record review to prove the injury or neglect would involve voluminous medical records.

Reviewing Medical Records for Causation Falls occurring in nursing homes can be fatal or cause serious injuries and fractures. Elderly people are also prone to soft tissue injuries, lacerations and head trauma. In the case of those who have fractures, many may not recover the level of function they had earlier. The fear of falling will lead to other issues such as dependency, social isolation, poor quality of life and reduced mobility. There are many liability issues associated with falls and injuries in nursing homes and some of these focus on what should have been done to prevent the event. Any delay in providing treatment and care can result in dire consequences and trigger personal injury and medical malpractice cases. Attorneys handling such cases would be looking for evidence such as the following when evaluating the medical records. 

Whether the healthcare provider had thoroughly assessed the patient and looked for clear signs of an injury.

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Whether signs of injury, fracture etc. were overlooked, maybe because the provider did not have the knowledge or experience to critically analyze and understand the medical data available.

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Whether the provider responded to the concerns expressed by another person, for instance, the nurse caring for the patient.

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Whether the provider made timely decisions as to what to do regarding the changes observed in the patient’s condition, though he/she had heard the concerns of the nurse/bedside clinician.

Nursing home staff may be responsible for damages including medical bill, pain and suffering of the patient if they acted negligently and the negligence is proved during a detailed assessment of the resident’s medical records, medical issues and prior falls, if any.

Proving the Negligence/Personal Injury Case Many elderly nursing home residents may have a number of serious medical conditions that would make it difficult to determine whether or not an injury is directly related to the neglect/abuse incident. Nursing home abuse attorneys rely on medical record review providers to carefully examine the relevant records and gather the precise information required to bring a lawsuit for nursing home neglect or abuse. For the case to have a successful outcome, the following has to be proved.  The nursing home owner/healthcare provider breached a duty of care they owed to the resident.  The resident suffered an injury as a result of the breach.  The nursing home staff’s conduct was the cause of the injury.

When a nursing home receives notification of an impending lawsuit, attempts may be made to tamper with the medical records of the patient. However, experienced medical reviewers can easily recognize such tampering by preparing timelines and chronologies to identify such discrepancies.

www.mosmedicalrecordreview.com

1-800-670-2809