There’s been increased public attention in recent years on how nursing homes and assisted living facilities handle cleaning, sanitizing, and preventing disease spread inside their property. Unfortunately, many facilities have been slacking in this regard for years now, sometimes even decades, and their negligence has led to hundreds of vulnerable people suffering entirely preventable harm.
If someone you love has contracted an infection in a Quakertown nursing home, you should strongly consider talking to a nursing home neglect lawyer about your legal options. While not every situation like this calls for a lawsuit, a skilled attorney’s guidance can be vital to figuring out whether your loved one’s illness could’ve been prevented and what you can do to help them enforce their rights under Pennsylvania law.
What Kinds of Infections Commonly Happen in Nursing Homes?
Communicable diseases like COVID-19, the flu, and even the common cold can run rampant through nursing homes that don’t establish and follow strict policies for keeping healthy residents isolated from sick ones and cleaning areas where germs and viruses may spread. A lot of infections can also occur inside Quakertown nursing homes that don’t spread from person to person, but instead are caused by a single resident being neglected or abused.
Some of the more common problems along these lines that our attorneys have helped take legal action over in the past include:
- Urinary tract infections (UTIs) caused by dirty clothes and lack of assistance going to the bathroom
- Sepsis and other blood infections
- Staph infections, MRSA, bedsores, and other skin infections
- Colon infections, particularly those caused by clostridium difficile bacteria
Your first priority after discovering your loved one is dealing with one of these or any other infection in a nursing home should be getting them emergency medical care, since many of these infections can be deadly if left untreated.
Collecting Evidence for a Nursing Home Infection Lawsuit
Once your loved one has gotten proper treatment for an infection they contracted in a Quakertown nursing home, the next step in the process of suing over that infection will be gathering evidence to prove the nursing home’s owners should be legally liable for it. First and foremost, you need to prove that the infection actually happened and was harmful enough to cause specific losses that you are seeking compensation for. This can typically be done with comprehensive medical records from your loved one’s doctors, receipts and bills for the costs of medical services, and testimony from yourself and family members about how this infection has affected your loved one’s life.
Then, you need to build a case showing that a specific irresponsible act—or series of acts, in some cases—directly led to your loved one contracting an otherwise preventable infection. In addition to testimony from medical experts, this may require testimony from nursing home staff members and managers, photos and videos of conditions inside the nursing home, and records like employee shift schedules that can establish who should’ve checked in on your loved one at what specific times.
Get Help from a Quakertown Attorney with Suing Over an Infection in a Nursing Home
Getting all this information together and compiling it into a strong civil claim is far from easy. In fact, you may have a hard time getting your family paid anything at all for the effects of an infection in a Quakertown nursing home if you try to pursue your claim entirely on your own.
Fortunately, help is available from knowledgeable legal professionals who are well-known for winning cases like yours in the past. Call Ostroff Godshall Injury and Accident Lawyers today to learn more about your options.
