Nursing Home Neglect Attorneys

Nursing home neglect occurs when a long-term care facility fails to provide the level of care that a resident requires, resulting in harm to the resident's health, safety, or well-being. Unlike abuse, which involves intentional harmful acts, neglect involves failures of omission — the facility's failure to do what it is required to do. Common forms of nursing home neglect include failure to provide adequate nutrition and hydration, failure to prevent and treat pressure ulcers (bedsores), inadequate assistance with mobility and personal hygiene, failure to administer medications properly, failure to monitor and respond to changes in a resident's condition, and insufficient supervision leading to falls and wandering.

Nursing home neglect claims are typically based on the facility's violation of federal and state standards of care for nursing homes. The Nursing Home Reform Act requires facilities participating in Medicare and Medicaid to provide care that enables each resident to attain or maintain the highest practicable physical, mental, and psychosocial well-being. State regulations supplement these federal standards with additional requirements. Expert testimony from geriatric medicine specialists or nursing home administration professionals is used to establish how the facility's care fell below these standards.

Neglect cases often involve systemic institutional failures — primarily understaffing — that affect multiple residents simultaneously. When a facility does not employ enough nurses and aides to meet its residents' care needs, individual residents suffer preventable harm. Legal claims can target the individual facility and its corporate parent company, seeking accountability for the business decisions that led to inadequate care.