Tennessee Nursing homes fined

Over the past couple of months two Nashville nursing homes have been fined. Conditions in one home were found to be detrimental to the health, safety or welfare of the residents. The other nursing home failed administer medications and treatments as ordered, notify physician of changes in resident condition, report unusual incidents and investigate complaints, among other problems. Unfortunately, these reports occur too often.

So how is the neglect discovered? In general the Tennessee health care facilities department surveys the homes on a random basis. These surprise inspections often reveal that our loved ones are not being treated with the dignity and respect they deserve. Some inspections reveal actual abuse and neglect . Also, family members and staff have the ability to file complaints with the state to report mistreatment. These leads us to our next question. Why does this occur on such a regular basis?

I have represented many families in nursing home neglect case. Sometimes we find that a loved one has suffered an injury in the facility as the result of negligence, an accident. However, more often than not we find that a loved one suffered unnecessary injuries because the home did not hire sufficient staff to care for all the patients. In other words, they tried to increase their profits by cutting staff and thereby cutting costs. Profits over people.