Nursing Home Neglect
Key Takeaways:
- Complicated Medical Causation: This case highlights how an initial home health injury (a broken leg) directly led to immobilization, creating the perfect environment for a secondary Stage IV sacral pressure injury.
- Lack of Caregiver Training: Home health agencies have a strict duty to properly train their aides on safe, specialized transfer techniques for paralyzed patients.
- Insurance Accountability: Through extensive litigation and two separate mediations, the home health company’s insurance carrier was forced to pay significant compensation for the harm caused.
In this case, our client was a service-disabled veteran who was a quadriplegic. His wife, who had been with him since he was first paralyzed decades earlier and became his caregiver, wanted to go on a girls’ trip for the first time ever, so she interviewed home health aides and companies to ensure she got someone who could perform the client’s specialized care in her absence.
The client’s wife showed a home health aide exactly how to transfer him into and out of bed, but when the aide tried to transfer the client herself, she caught his foot on the bed as she rotated and broke his leg. The client was forced to wear an immobilizing boot to heal the fracture, but it interfered with his mobility and repositioning in bed and led to the development of a bedsore that progressed to Stage IV and required substantial treatment to heal.
Ultimately, after lengthy litigation and two mediations, the home health company’s insurance carrier settled the claim. When medical staff fail to provide proper care, consulting with skilled Orlando pressure ulcer lawyers is essential to hold negligent providers accountable.