Asheville residents who are considering filing a nursing home abuse lawsuit must consider many factors. What effects will the legal process have on their aging parent? How long will the nursing home malpractice lawsuit take? How much money does a nursing home abuse lawsuit cost? These are among the many questions families typically ask themselves at the beginning of the process.

Families should have an idea of what to expect before even contacting an attorney’s office about filing suit against a nursing home. You can determine what questions to ask once you know about the stages of a nursing home lawsuit, allowing you to decide what is best for your family and your aging loved one and make the most of your consultation and future meetings with your attorney.

Even when families perform due diligence in choosing an Asheville nursing home for an aging parent or relative, abuse can still occur. Many seniors who are abused are victimized over and over again before the abuse is discovered – if it is ever discovered.

One of the most difficult things about discovering elder abuse is that many seniors have mental health problems or physical conditions that make it hard to detect. Abusers know this and often target patients with conditions like Alzheimer’s disease or dementia. These disorders cause confusion, memory loss, paranoia, and other symptoms. The result is that when your parent describes to you an incident of abuse or theft, you may be unsure whether or not to believe their story. Abusers anticipate this kind of reaction, and they often target patients who have these kinds of problems exactly for that reason.

In our last post, we talked about a Western North Carolina residential care facility that, in 2015, received a zero rating by NC Department of Health and Human Services because of numerous, egregious health and safety standard violations that left the facility’s residents at serious risk of harm. Despite this, the facility’s owner successfully sued DHHS to withdraw the dismal rating, along with the fines the agency had levied. Even now, the facility’s rating in state documentation is listed as four stars, with no issues reported or cautions to consumers listed about the home’s past violations.

Many families deciding on a nursing home rely on state ratings to help them make the best choice for their aging parents. The fact that state agency ratings may be untrustworthy has disquieting implications for residents of Asheville seeking nursing home care for a loved one. How can families determine whether a nursing home is right for their aging parent or relative? In this article, we will discuss how you can evaluate a nursing home without relying solely on ratings from government agencies.

Like many residents of Asheville, you may have a family member who needs frequent or even around-the-clock care. However, work and other obligations outside the home keep many seniors’ adult children and relatives from being able to be present all day. Leaving a relative with special needs alone is often not possible, especially if they have Alzheimer’s disease or a mental illness that makes them a danger to themselves or others. This article is the first in a series of four about nursing home abuse in North Carolina and what families can do if they believe a relative has been abused.

Placing an elderly parent or disabled loved one in a nursing or adult care home is one of the most difficult decisions many families make. Some families take months deciding on a facility, taking the time to review state documentation and other metrics of a nursing home’s safety, reliability, cleanliness and other conditions. Above all sources, families should be able to trust government agencies commissioned specifically to look out for a state’s most vulnerable residents. However, a recent investigative report by Carolina Public Press showed that families should even be cautious about trusting state agencies’ reviews of nursing home facilities.

Like many Asheville families, you may have struggled with the decision of whether to place your aging loved one in a nursing home or other long-term care facility. These facilities are often the safest place for seniors with aging-related medical conditions. However, many nursing homes fall short of fulfilling their obligations to patients, often leading to negligent or intentional harm by the employees of these facilities.

Negligence in nursing homes

Accidents do happen even in the best care facilities. Residents’ physical and mental conditions often cause them to fall, wander, or put themselves into other dangerous situations. However, if your loved one seems to have frequent accidents, nursing home negligence may be the real culprit.