Our nations’ nursing homes are in dire need of help. Every day, nursing home abuse attorneys of Messa & Associates, P.C. are contacted by individuals regarding some form of abuse or negligence that a loved one endured in a nursing home. The importance of patient care seems to have dissipated and its priority replaced by money and business related needs.
However, it seems there is has been a push for betterment in the nursing home industry. Advancing Excellence, NH Quality Campaign – a campaign created to encourage, assist, and empower nursing homes to improve the quality of life, prevent bed sores and pressure ulcers, and care for residents – is prepared to change the nursing homes of America.
Nursing Home Abuse Attorneys Support goals of Advancing Excellence Campaign
The coalition, which is the first of its kind, is made up of long term care providers, medical professionals, consumers, employees, and state and federal agencies. It has 8 major goals:
- To minimize staff turnover; a stable workforce will improve patient care.
- To employ a “Constant Assignment” plan so that patients are regularly cared for by the same caregiver.
- To reduce the time residents spend restrained. Independence will improve quality of life.
- To prevent bed sores and pressure ulcers, and to provide appropriate treatment of those that do develop.
- To prevent unnecessary or prolonged episodes of severe pain.
- To include residents in advanced care planning prior to the completion of their stay
- To use assessments of resident and family experience of care to improve future quality of care for patient safety.
- To use assessment of staff satisfaction of work environment to improve future quality of care.
Many nursing home establishments have joined forces with Advancing Excellence in efforts to improve the quality of care they provide. Obviously, these establishments are aware and agree that they are not providing top notch care. It’s good news to those who have suffered from nursing abuse, neglect, and inadequacy.
All nursing homes in New Jersey are in fact either participants in or charter members of the Advancing Excellence campaign. We should be proud that caregivers in the state are willing to step up and begin providing the kind of care our elderly citizens deserve.
New Jersey and Philadelphia Nursing Home Abuse Attorneys
If you are someone who has seen first-hand the effects of nursing home abuse, negligence, and inadequacy, it’s time to contact a nursing home abuse attorney. The team at Messa & Associates is dedicated to earning justice and compensation for those injured or worse by negligence and abuse in nursing homes and long term care facilities.
Call, toll-free, 1-800-MessaLaw, or submit a free online inquiry. If you would like immediate assistance, click the CHAT LIVE icon to the right. A representative is present right now to answer your questions.
Among a myriad of errors that hospital employees can make on the job, the following seem to be the ones that occur most often: 
The Avista Healthcare nursing home, located in Cherry Hill, New Jersey was routinely inspected twice between December 2008 and November 2010. During this time period, 10 separate deficiencies were cited. The nursing home was cited for failing to properly procure and serve food in a sanitary manner. As we have often highlighted in our previous posts, proper nutrition is imperative for good health and bedsore prevention in nursing home patients. 
This for-profit, corporately owned nursing home was cited for a variety of deficiencies from November 2008 through October 2010. The citations were in a wide variety of categories including, among others, nutrition/dietary needs, living environment, and pharmaceutical responsibilities. For example, it indicated that some residents were affected by the fact that the pharmacy made medication errors of more than 5%. These errors are defined as administering the wrong drugs, administering the wrong doses, or administering drugs ate the wrong times. Medication errors can lead to many serious health issues. 
On the day of her daughter Cassie’s birth, Dr. Lisa Yang and her colleagues administered drugs and forced the kind of birth deemed nearly impossible early on in Heather’s pregnancy. The drugs administered were supposed to assist the uterus in contracting, and eventually the baby would be expelled. However, because of her mother’s condition, and because of Cassie’s size, which the doctors failed to consider, Cassie’s head became stuck. 
Kiarra Smith was born 3 months pre-mature and weighed only one and half pounds. Life began as a struggle for the tiny infant. Fifteen days after her birth, Kiarra was given an extreme dosage of nutrients, over 100 times her prescribed dose. The error led to cardiac arrest and other severe complications, including blindness.
One way to prevent bed sores from forming is to have a staff that is properly educated. Educational programs about bed sore and pressure ulcer prevention should be made mandatory for all levels of health care providers. They should also be made available for patient families so that they can make sure nursing home staff members are giving their loved ones the care they need and deserve. Patients who have the appropriate mental capacity should also be given instructions so that they can be advocates for their own proper care. 
Olivia Cull underwent surgery as a baby that left one side of her heart smaller than the other. She lived her life this way, until she was a senior in high school. Doctors wanted to install a catheter in her heart to prep for the final surgery that would correct the small side of her heart. She was nervous, but her mother reassured her that the catheterization procedure would only take a few hours, and that she had done it many times before. Doctors told the Culls Olivia would be home before dinner. 
A Kentucky jury awarded $42.75 million to a family who claimed that