A nursing home in Canyon, Texas may face criminal charges after 81-year-old Bill West was beaten by another male resident. On July 29, the man hit West five times in the face resulting in several broken bones, his jaw broken in five places, a broken eye socket and cheek bone. He remained at the Sky West Assisted Living Center by Shaw for two days after the beating with “no indication of medical care for those days — or very little,” said Assistant Randall County Criminal District Attorney Richard Gore. He was taken to a hospital and died 20 days later. According to a forensic pathologist, West died of pneumonia, resulting from blunt-force trauma to the head and his death was ruled a homicide. As nursing home neglect lawyers, we know that if the injuries were this severe then the facility was negligent in not providing the proper medical attention.
Facility May Face Charges for Lack of Care after Fight
According to the facility records, the employee who witnessed the fight wrote that the staff gave West treatment to stop facial bleeding. The facility’s owner, Lonnie Shaw, was asked if West was examined by a physician but declined to comment. The victim’s family is very upset about the cause of his death and how the facility handled his treatment. According to West’s daughter Terry Wester, his wife Loudene called the facility that day to check in and was informed of the incident. The staff told her that he was in a fight and suffered a cut lip. When Wester went to check on her father two days later he was in obvious pain and it was clear that he had been badly beaten. She asked for an ambulance and took him to a hospital.
A grand jury has cleared the other resident responsible for the attack, but the facility may still face charges. “We did substantiate an allegation of neglect. We found the facility had deficiencies in the areas of residents’ rights and client protection,” said Texas Department of Aging and Disability Services spokeswoman Cecilia Fedorov.
Nursing Home Neglect Lawyers in New Jersey and Philadelphia
If your loved one is currently a resident of a nursing home or care facility, we encourage you to visit frequently and be very observant of their treatment as well as their living conditions. If you are worried that the care they are receiving is negligent, abusive, or inadequate and would like to speak with one of our professional nursing home neglect lawyers, contact the Mininno Law Office for a free case evaluation. You may also call for a free consultation at (856) 833-0600 in New Jersey, or (215) 567-2380 in Philadelphia.
While at the hospital awaiting his transplant, an unrelated instance of medical negligence led to serious medical issues for Dr. Parsons. Parsons was accidentally given a dose of insulin from a nurse who failed to read a note that specifically stated that no insulin be administered. Medical malpractice attorneys believe that the insulin led Parsons into a diabetic coma and eventually caused his death only three weeks later. That’s when medical malpractice attorneys took on the case of Parson’s widow and family to seek justice for the alleged malpractice. The case never reached trial, which allowed the parties to avoid a lengthy litigation process. The two parties agreed to settle for a sum of approximately $5 million earlier this month. It appears that nurses had previously complained to higher-ups that the healthcare providers, on the floor Parsons was located, were overworked and given far too many patients.
First, Damian Saul, 43, suffered a massive stroke while he waited for hours to see a physician at a city hospital. Upon his arrival, Saul informed a nurse that he was having trouble with his sight in one eye. This should have been recognized by the nurse as an initial sign of a stroke. The ensuing stroke left him almost completely paralyzed and he was unable to speak clearly. His medical malpractice attorneys reached a settlement of $5.5 million. His medical malpractice attorneyswere quoted as saying,
Jeffers’ family agreed to a settlement with Methodist Hospital and emergency room workers in the amount of $10 million. Medical malpractice attorneys believe that $9 million will come from the hospital while the remainder will be paid by Emergency Physicians Medical Group of Sacramento, resulting in one of the largest awards in California history. Some of the money will go towards current expenses and the remainder will be given to young Malyia, beginning in 2026 on her 18th birthday, at $16,000 per month. Although California has a damage cap in place at a quarter of a million dollars, this only limits damages related to “pain and suffering”. Medical malpractice attorneys believe that this settlement was properly designed to avoid the cap and attribute the amounts of money to different types of damages. Hopefully, this amount of money will help the young girl adapt to her new life after this devastating case of malpractice and will allow her to lead a normal life.
Medical malpractice attorneys have traditionally believed that the use of electronic medical records would actually decrease the number of medical mistakes and other prescription errors. With the increase in technology, medical malpractice attorneys thought that doctors and nurses would be better equipped to avoid preventable mistakes and injuries and reduce the potential for civil lawsuits. It is easy to see why people thought that better technology would help healthcare providers avoid unnecessary medical malpractice. Doctors, who are notorious for poor handwriting, would not have the same problems communicating data to others in patient charts, the equipment could monitor drug prescriptions to avoid dangerous mixtures, and hospital workers could be alerted easily of particular patient conditions without the hassle of digging through charts. However, many studies are now showing that the expected benefits of the new healthcare technology are not coming to fruition as fast as expected, if at all. The Institute of Medicine has also highlighted numerous dangers that could lead to malpractice and cause patients severe injuries. The report stated “although the magnitude of the risk associated with health IT is not known, some examples illustrate the concerns. . . Dosing errors, failure to detect life-threatening illnesses, and delaying treatment due to poor human-computer interactions or loss of data have led to serious injury and death.”
Sandy Pasch originally wrote the bill in an attempt to disallow courts to consider healthcare provider’s apologies, but since the bill became more expanded, she elected to vote against the bill. Pasch, a nurse, was quoted as saying,
