Adam J. Peck, ESQ is a principal with Peck Law Group, APC. In 2008, Mr. Adam Peck received his Juris Doctorate from Whittier Law School where he graduated Cum Laude. His practice is primarily dedicated to representing Elders, Dependent Adults, along with their loved ones and family members, who have suffered horrific personal injuries.
If not prevented in time, bed sores may lead to osteomyelitis, a rare bone condition. Typically diagnosed alongside a skin bacteria called Staphylococcus aureus, osteomyelitis infiltrates surgical sites or open wounds.
When infectious bacteria invade a deep, open wound on an elderly patient in a long-term care facility, it is usually considered a form of nursing negligence.
For at-risk elderly patients that do not receive proper care in a long-term care facility, they have a higher chance of developing bed sores accompanied by further complications and life-threatening conditions, such as osteomyelitis.
Approximately between 17 and 32 percent of patients with pre-existing bed sores develop osteomyelitis as well.
High-risk elderly patients in nursing homes require adequate care, so caretakers must take additional precautions to prevent dangerous diseases.
If your loved one is suffering from osteomyelitis in an at-fault nursing home, take immediate action by contacting the experienced osteomyelitis attorneys at the Peck Law Group to inquire about your legal rights.
Stage 4 Bed Sores
When high-risk patients do not receive sufficient treatment from their caretakers, bed sores may form and advance rapidly to Stage 4. At Stage 4, an open bed sore wound becomes deeper and highly infectious in the skin, potentially exposing bones or muscles. Exposed muscles or bones are where osteomyelitis is likely to appear.
Because Stage 4 bed sores and osteomyelitis are preventable in long-term care, both are considered forms of elder abuse. If a nursing facility does not implement proper prevention and treatment procedures, patients’ lives will be at risk.
Common Symptoms of Osteomyelitis
As infectious bacteria enter the bone tissue, osteomyelitis can appear on long bones, including the leg, arm, foot, spine, or hip bones. With osteomyelitis, at-risk patients experience extreme discomfort and pain daily.
Common symptoms of osteomyelitis include fever, muscle spasms, and chronic pain and inflammation at the site.
Treatments for Osteomyelitis
Though osteomyelitis was once considered untreatable, modern antibiotics and surgical procedures treat this disease effectively.
Here are some effective treatments that stop osteomyelitis from spreading:
Medically prescribed antibiotics to use throughout multiple treatment phases
Surgical procedures to remove the dead bone tissue and cease the spread of bacteria
Medical devices to relieve any pressure on the body, followed by a strict repositioning schedule
If necessary, an amputation procedure for the infected limb
Understand that infected bones need ample time to heal post-treatment. If the infection is especially severe, a patient’s healing process could take several months.
Is Osteomyelitis Preventable?
Fortunately, yes, osteomyelitis is preventable.
However, caretakers need to undergo proper training procedures to identify, diagnose, and prevent bed sores, osteomyelitis, and other life-threatening conditions. Essential preventative measures for bed sores and osteomyelitis include repositioning high-risk patients every few hours and rigorously cleansing open wounds or cuts before infectious bacteria penetrates deeper levels in the skin.
Unfortunately, if a nursing home does not enforce sufficient osteomyelitis training practices, some caretakers may not recognize this life-threatening condition until it is too late.
Osteomyelitis is often a result of caregiver negligence.
The Peck Law Group has over 52 years of combined experience in fighting for victims of abuse and neglect at nursing homes and assisted living facilities.
Receive your free case evaluation with one of our experienced osteomyelitis lawyers today by calling toll free 866-999-9085 or by filling out the form on our website.
Understaffing in nursing homes is becoming a major problem in the state of California. Between 2020 and 2021, over 150 California nursing homes filled out a form for approval to understaff their facilities. So far in 2022, an additional 200+ care facilities have applied for the same approval.
While some of this understaffing can be explained by worker shortages, there is likely also something more sinister at work: intentional understaffing. Keep reading to find out what causes understaffing, why it’s dangerous, and how it can be prevented.
Have you or a loved one experienced abuse or neglect at a nursing home or an assisted living facility? If so, it’s important to act right away.
The Peck Law Group has over 52 years of combined experience in helping victims throughout California. Receive your free case evaluation with one of our nursing home abuse attorneys today by calling toll free 866-999-9085.
The Causes of Nursing Home Understaffing
There’s no doubt that understaffing can result from a lack of applicants to a care facility. However, it’s more common than you think for nursing home owners to purposefully understaff their care facilities.
Typically, this happens for a few reasons:
#1: To Cut Labor Costs
It’s not hard to imagine that fully staffing a nursing home comes at a huge payroll cost. After all, the minimum ideal staffing level in California is 1:8. That means for every 8 patients in the facility, there should be one nurse on the schedule.
To put this into perspective, let’s say a nursing home houses 40 residents. At the minimum ideal level of staffing, this nursing home would always need 5 members of the nursing staff on-duty. Let’s say these nurses are paid state minimum wage at $15.00 an hour.
This means the daily payroll total for nurses alone in a fully-staffed facility would be $1800 a day.
Now, let’s look at the daily payroll for an understaffed facility. Due to worker shortages, this facility is only able to accommodate one nurse per every 20 patients. The same 40-resident facility now only requires 2 nurses on duty at any given time.
Even if these nurses are paid the same rate of $15.00 an hour, the daily payroll total for nurses only comes to $720.
As you can see, even though patient care might suffer as a result, there’s no denying that nursing home understaffing has a huge impact on payroll costs.
#2: High Rates of Staff Turnover
One of the biggest problems that nursing home understaffing causes is exhaustion. When nursing home staff is forced to complete work that’s meant for multiple people, it puts undue strain on them.
Unfortunately, even with the promise of overtime pay, nursing home staff are often more likely to quit their jobs due to being grossly overworked. Unfortunately, this only perpetuates the ever-worsening problem of nursing home understaffing.
#3: Inaccurate Staffing Reporting
Staffing reporting is an important way that Medicare keeps tabs on nursing homes. This process is intended to make it easy to identify which care facilities are understaffed, and to give a full picture of just how bad the situation is.
However, staffing levels were, at one point, being forwarded directly from nursing homes with no documentation requirements. This made it possible for nursing homes to intentionally send incorrect information.
To fight intentional inaccurate staffing reporting, most states now require staffing levels to be verified by payroll.
The Dangers of Understaffing in Nursing Homes
Nursing home understaffing has vastly negative effects on many different fronts. For employees of these facilities, it leads to exhaustion, overwhelm, and far too often, employee turnover.
However, for nursing home residents, the problems are far more serious.
When nursing homes fail to adequately staff their facilities, it is the residents who suffer. When too few nurses are on-duty, it means that meals might not get delivered on time, pain medication requests can take longer to be fulfilled, the resident’s needs may be neglected, and more.
The harrowing truth is that nursing home understaffing can be a huge factor in serious injury or even the death of residents.
Aside from day-to-day operations being interrupted, nursing home understaffing also poses an extreme safety risk to residents.
For example, one of the most important jobs of nursing staff in these facilities is helping residents to the bathroom. This role is intended to reduce the risk of patients falling on their way to the bathroom.
Nursing home understaffing means that residents will likely be forced to wait longer periods before receiving help getting to the bathroom. This often leads to residents attempting to make it to the bathroom solo, which results in a larger risk of falling.
Another big risk of nursing home understaffing is new or worsened bed sores.
Some patients in care facilities are bound to their beds and must be turned periodically to keep them comfortable and to avoid painful bed sores. Nursing home understaffing greatly impacts the timeliness and frequency of patients being turned, which can exacerbate bed sores or cause new ones to emerge.
Overall, nursing home understaffing undoubtedly leads to a diminished level of patient care. In fact, it is this problem that has been directly connected with an alarming rate of nursing home neglect cases. The fact of the matter is that it is virtually impossible for understaffed nursing homes to operate at an acceptable capacity.
How to Prevent Understaffing in Nursing Homes
We know the risks that come along with understaffing in nursing homes, so what can be done about it?
The good news is that there are many ways to prevent understaffing in nursing homes while championing adequate and safe patient care for all nursing home residents.
Perhaps the easiest way to combat nursing home understaffing is to make staffing a top priority at nursing home facilities. Directors who demand non-negotiable staff levels complete with a minimum number of CNA’s and nurses are far less likely to have issues with nursing home abuse and neglect.
Paying close attention to when a care facility is staffed is another gravely important detail.
Studies show that nursing home understaffing is more prevalent on weekends, which means that care directors must pay close attention to staffing according to resident needs, not employee desires.
Overall, preventing understaffing in nursing homes has all-around positive impacts on residents. Facilities can enjoy a lesser chance of nursing home abuse charges, lower turnover rates, and are able to offer a higher standard of care as a result.
The Peck Law Group has worked with many people that have been neglected at nursing homes and assisted living facilities due to understaffing. If you or a love one have become a victim of abuse or neglect, contact us today for your free case evaluation with one of our nursing home abuse lawyers.
Stage 4 Pressure Ulcers, also known as Decubitus Ulcers, Bedsores, Pressure Sores, and Pressure Injuries, are a very serious medical condition that can result in significant injury or death when left untreated.
Being aware of stages of pressure ulcers and how they develop is the best way to protect yourself from negligent nursing and assisted living facilities.
Today, we’ll go into depth about what Pressure Ulcers are, what causes them, how they’re treated, and what you can do if your loved one has developed ulcers resulting from abuse at a nursing home or assisted living facility.
Have you or a loved one developed Stage 3 or Stage 4 Pressure Ulcers at a long-term care facility? The Peck Law Group, APC has over 52 years of combined experience in fighting for victims of abuse and neglect at nursing homes and assisted living facilities.
Pressure ulcers are areas of injured skin where prolonged contact with surfaces has stopped the blood flow to certain parts of skin and tissue.
While anyone can develop Pressure Sores, people with mobility issues are at the highest risk for developing them, especially when in the care of nursing homes and long-term care facilities.
To better understand Stage 4 pressure ulcers, you’ll first need to know where they come from. There are three major causes of these sores: friction, pressure, and shear.
Friction: Friction refers to certain areas of skin being pulled or dragged against a surface. In a nursing home setting, friction-induced pressure sores usually result from nursing home staff improperly moving a patient from place to place, such as from a bed to a wheelchair. Properly trained personnel should be careful to lift patients rather than dragging or pulling them to reduce the risk of developing pressure ulcers.
Pressure: When a nursing home resident is left in one position for too long, they are put at major risk for developing bed sores. What’s even more concerning is that it doesn’t take long for these wounds to develop; in certain conditions, they can manifest in as little as a few hours. The primary way that nursing homes usually prevent this is by implementing a strict repositioning schedule where at-risk patients are moved around at least every two hours, at a minimum.
Shear: Shear happens when the skin is pulled in one direction while the underlying tissue stays in the same place. This can happen to care facility residents while they’re sleeping if they slide down the bed in their slumber. To prevent this, trained staff should keep residents elevated at a 30-degree angle and special care should be taken to ensure patients don’t shift throughout the night.
Another important thing to note about Pressure Ulcers is where they typically occur.
These sores are most prevalent in bony areas such as the Coccyx, feet, elbows and hips. Consequently, patients who have trouble keeping on weight or are becoming frail due to sickness or old age are particularly at risk of developing the Bedsores.
One way that nursing homes help combat the risk of Bedsore development is by offering healthy, nutritious meals to help residents maintain a healthy weight. However, contributing factors such as loss of appetite and dementia can make it tough for nurses to help their patients keep the weight on.
Even though Bedsore and Pressure Ulcer risk factors can be mitigated, some nursing homes fail to uphold their duties to their residents.
Lack of adequate staffing at nursing homes and assisted living facilities often leads to neglect and negligent care, which leaves nursing home staff with less time available to perform their job duties to prevent the formation of Bedsores.
Skipping just one or two repositioning’s will result in the onset of bed sores. When left undetected or untreated, these wounds can quickly progress, eventually becoming life-threatening.
Unfortunately, many nursing homes across the country still opt to ignore the necessities of their residents, which has caused tens of thousands of residents in nursing homes and assisted living facilities to have experienced Bedsores, Decubitus Ulcers, and significant pressure injury.
The Four Stages of Pressure Ulcers
When Pressure Ulcers are caught and treated in the early stages, discomfort is minimal and recovery time is short. However, when left to progress, the condition can turn life-threatening in as little as a few days to weeks.
The first stage of Bedsores is called Stage 1. During this stage, Bedsores begin to develop on the skin, which turns areas red or purple.
Next, in Stage 2, the area may develop blisters, become more tender to the touch, and more apt to become infected.
Stage 3 happens when the surface sore begins to tunnel into underlying tissue but has not hit the muscle or bone yet.
Stage 4 Pressure Ulcers represent the most severe phase of the disease. By the time the sores reach this intensity, the wound has tunneled deep into the body, and can even go straight to the bone. At this point, the ulcer has been left without treatment for so long that extensive damage has resulted.
The presence of Stage 4 Pressure Ulcers indicates that damage to bone, tendons, and joints might be present and may have become infected.
You might even be surprised to learn that some residents at this stage may not experience any pain due to the nerve damage caused. However, that doesn’t mean that emergency medical attention isn’t needed.
Due to the severity of Stage 4 Pressure Ulcers, serious and catastrophic complications are a significant possibility. Infection of the bone, called osteomyelitis, or blood infection, called sepsis, are two examples of serious health threats to people with Stage 4 Pressure Ulcers.
If your loved one has been subjected to poor care conditions that resulted in Stage 3 or Stage 4 Pressure Sores, help is available. With the knowledge and experience of a nursing home abuse attorney at the Peck Law Group, you can get your family the justice you deserve. Call toll free 866-999-9085 today and hold the care facility accountable.
Stage 4 Pressure Ulcer Treatment
The most shocking thing about the United States Bedsore problem is that the disease is 100% preventable. With proper patient care and a strict protocol, nursing homes should never have a problem with pressure ulcers in their facility.
The good news is that if your loved one is dealing with Bed Sores, treatment is available. The bad news is that if you wait too long to seek help, they may never get relief from the ailment.
As you might expect, the first step in treatment is removing pressure from the afflicted areas.
Then, special dressings and sometimes even topical medications are applied to the sores to help them heal and to protect them from infection. As a part of the treatment plan, these dressings are kept clean and rotated frequently to decrease the risk of infection.
Cleaning of Pressure Ulcers
If the Bed Sores are severe enough, wound cleaning, also called debridement, might be necessary. During this procedure, a doctor must surgically go in to remove existing dead tissue from the wound. While this procedure is not usually painful, it does increase a patient’s recovery time and can cause stress and anxiety.
Following debridement, skin grafts might be necessary to encourage the affected sites to heal. This process involves removing healthy skin from another part of a patient’s body and transplanting it into the areas ridden by Pressure Ulcers. Luckily, patients are usually under anesthesia during the operation, so it’s not painful, but can take 5 to 14 days to heal, depending on the severity.
Though these treatment options are available, not every patient is an ideal candidate for the operations. Nursing home residents who are especially elderly or frail might have co-morbidities that make it very dangerous for them to go under general anesthesia, for example.
Take Action Against Nursing Home and Assisted Living Neglect Today
If your family is dealing with Bedsores resulting from nursing home and assisted living neglect, you need to take action immediately. Don’t wait for the medical bills to stack up or for a more serious condition to occur due to the nursing home’s negligence.
Remember: the sooner you start the process of holding the facility accountable for your Stage 4 Pressure Ulcer(s), the better.
Speak with an experienced attorney at the Peck Law Group today and start the process of getting your family the justice and compensation you deserve. Call toll-free 866-999-9085 or fill out our free case evaluation form.
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