A Practical and Legal Checklist for Families in the Challenging Process of Selecting a Nursing Home
Families that do not have the skills or resources to care for an elderly person are often faced with the difficult decision of finding a suitable nursing or elder care facility for that person. More than 16,000 nursing facilities are currently in operation in the United States. Many of them provide excellent care and services, but a number continue to be reported for violations of federal and state standards. Other have been named in lawsuits alleging that their negligence and inattentiveness has resulted in serious and life-threatening injuries.
Consider the Following Benefits Legal Counsel Can Offer in Your Search for a Good Nursing Home
By the time that most families consider the involvement of legal counsel, extensive amounts of paperwork, word of mouth networking, internet research, and other attempts to find the right place for their loved one has left families highly uncertain on how to proceed, or with a dearth of viable options in light of what information was uncovered initially. In any case, further, in-depth legal knowledge is critical in determining the relative safety of a given nursing home facility. Attorneys who focus their practices on elder care issues are familiar with elder care and nursing facilities across the country. In this legal discipline, which has significant crossover with government regulatory officials and non-profits promoting the proper treatment of the elderly, all have access to information that is generally not reported in public ranking or, if it is reported, it is buried beneath layers of generalizations.
Most elder care lawyers minimally consider the following elements often inaccessible to the general public, when making the most informed decision in any given nursing home selection process, including:
Legal Due Diligence Is Readily Available to those Seeking Out the Best Nursing Home for Their Family Members or Loved Ones
This is a fundamental due diligence list of general topics that you and an elderly relative or loved one should consider in the course of making a nursing home decision. It is not a definitive list nor is it a guarantee that your chosen facility will provide adequate care. Selecting a nursing home is the beginning of a process that does not terminate. If a nursing home resident experiences injuries in spite of all of your due diligence, you may need to initiate litigation against the facility and its staff in order to recover compensation for those injuries. An elder care attorney will be best able to assist you at every stage of this process.
References:
http://oig.hhs.gov/oei/reports/oei-02-99-00040.pdf
https://www.cms.gov/medicare/provider-enrollment-and-certification/certificationandcomplianc/nhs.html
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2915498/
http://theconsumervoice.org/uploads/files/family-member/A-Consumer-Guide-To-Choosing-A-Nursing-Home.pdf
https://www.medicare.gov/Publications/Pubs/pdf/02174.pdf
http://theconsumervoice.org/uploads/files/family-member/A-Consumer-Guide-To-Choosing-A-Nursing-Home.pdf
https://www.medicare.gov/Publications/Pubs/pdf/02174.pdf
https://www.medicare.gov/files/nursing-home-checklist.pdf