Over the years, our Boston nursing home negligence law firm has blogged about the serious injuries that can result when a Massachusetts nursing home patient is subject to serious abuse or neglect. While such incidents are never the victim’s fault, we’ve talked about steps that family members can take beforehand to decrease the chances of placing their loved one in the hands of negligent nursing staff and caregivers.
Such preventive measures have included visiting the nursing home beforehand to check out the facilities, level of sanitary conditions, whether current patients seem happy there, and if staff seem competent at their job and appear to take a genuine interest in their patients. We’ve also talked about how important it was to visit the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services online to find out how the government has rated particular facility and how each nursing home under consideration compares with others in terms of health inspections, staffing, and other quality measures.
Now, the CMS is providing even more in-depth information for you to peruse when deciding where to place your loved one. Rather than having to submit a Freedom of Information act request or ask a nursing home for more specifics about why it received a particularly high or low rating, you can go to Nursing Home Compare online and choose to see the entire text of the report that nursing home inspectors have filed on a particular facility. This will hopefully provide families with even more information when deciding where their loved one should receive treatment/live.
Over the years, our Boston personal injury law firm has represented patients and their families that have suffered because of Massachusetts nursing home negligence. We’ve gone up against facilities and their owners that have failed to provide a patient with the proper nursing care or were clueless/looked the other way as staff sexually physically/mentally/emotionally abused a patient or neglected them by allowing them to wander off unattended, did not give them their medications, ignored their specialized feeding needs, did not change their sheets on a regular basis, or failed to provide them with other help and services that they needed.
Nursing Home Compare, Medicare.gov
Five-Star Quality Rating System, CMS.gov
Shopping for a Nursing Home? There’s a Tool for That, NY Times, September 6, 2012
More Blog Posts:
Milton, Massachusetts Choking Death at Group Home Leads to Manslaughter Charge, Boston Injury Lawyers Blog, October 18, 2012
Study May Have Exposed Elderly Boston Nursing Home Patients to Greater Risk of Fall Accidents, Boston Injury Lawyers Blog, October 4, 2012
Williamstown, Massachusetts Nursing Home Negligence Lawsuit Seeks Berkshire County Wrongful Death Compensation Following Patient’s Fall Accident, Boston Injury Lawyers Blog, June 13, 2012