Nursing homes account for more than 40% of all COVID-19 deaths.
The COVID-19 pandemic has proven devastating to many fragile residents of Pennsylvania and New Jersey’s nursing homes and assisted living facilities. The Kaiser Family Foundation published data supporting that nursing homes account for more than 40% of all COVID-19 deaths. Many communities lack the infection control knowledge, staffing resources, and personal protective equipment to keep their residents safe. As a result, many nursing home suffered significant outbreaks. If your loved one suffered a wrongful nursing home COVID-19 death, you may need a nursing home attorney.
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Infection Control Environments
Hand Hygiene
Equipment Cleaning
Personal Protective Equipment
Facilities are required to have infection control policies and procedures that are consistent with industry standards of care. These policies typically include standards for hand hygiene, equipment cleaning, and use of personal protective equipment (PPE). Nursing homes have specific obligations under federal and state regulations for infection prevention and surveillance. Facilities that fail to consistently follow these policies are most at risk for outbreaks of COVID-19. For example, a nurse aide who is tasked to care for 12 elderly residents may fail to perform appropriate handwashing. Staff shortages due to illness have reached a critical level in some homes. These shortages leave overworked nurses less time to capably follow infection control standards.
Personal protective equipment (PPE) shortages have haunted nursing homes since the beginning of the pandemic. Thousands of nursing homes still report having less than one week of N95 masks, gloves, and gowns on hand. An outbreak can quickly wipe out critically low level of supplies, leaving nursing home residents vulnerable to risk of infection. Some facilities fail to carefully plan for adequate supply levels, or refrain from purchasing supplies due to cost concerns.
Without the proper PPE, a nursing home cannot properly mitigate infection risk. Residents in these homes are more likely to succumb to an infection. Civil and criminal lawsuits have been filed to hold nursing homes accountable for resident deaths as a result of COVID-19 infections. Most lawsuits allege that the nursing home committed gross negligence in their infection control standards. For example, a nursing home in which 85% of residents become infected with COVID-19 may point to care deficiencies. Expert testimony may highlight the difference in care standards between the nursing home with a serious outbreak and a similar nursing home with a less extensive outbreak.
Staff Shortages And Abuse
Once a resident elopes from a nursing home, the risk of injury and death skyrockets. Countless times, a resident has been able to walk out unnoticed and has been unable to be found before succumbing to dangers such as freezing cold temperatures or excessive heat. Other residents have been hit by traffic on a busy street. Still other residents have drowned from falling into lakes, ponds, or other bodies of water. Investigation of nursing home elopements frequently finds that nursing home negligence is ultimately to blame for the resident’s injury or death.
In some cases, facilities fail to identify a resident with a wander risk and have made no attempts to intervene. In other cases, a resident with a known wander risk is able to elope due to malfunctioning door alarms or failure of technology devices intended to alert staff to a resident’s location. Many times, the facility simply fails to provide adequate supervision to routinely check on the resident and monitor their whereabouts. Some nursing homes have been falsified documentation about resident monitoring that, in fact, never occurred.