Elder abuse at nursing homes is real, and it’s quite disturbing and disheartening.
While it may be shocking to even think that some people, let alone nursing home staff, are capable of hurting or abusing elders, statistics reveal just how monstrous and awful some of the nursing homes in Los Angeles and all across California are.
Fact: nearly 10% of all of our country’s nursing homes had violations and were either a priori deemed dangerous or had documented cases of serious injury or abuse-caused death of elderly residents.
Fact #2: over 40% of nursing home residents have reported elder abuse, and a staggering more than 90% said they have witnessed another resident of the facility being abused.
The statistics are surely disturbing, especially if you’re considering placing your parent or grandparent in a nursing home in Los Angeles or elsewhere in California anytime soon.
Disturbing elder abuse incident grabs headlines
A reputable Los Angeles-based law firm JML Law, which has handled elder abuse cases in California for the past 35 years, warns that placing your loved one in a nursing home without examining the facility’s standards of care, hiring practices and other factors poses a series of risks.
You wouldn’t want your mom or dad, grandma or grandpa, abused at the facility where they are supposed to be treated with care and love.
One elder abuse incident, in particular, has recently sent off waves of shock all across the U.S., when hidden camera footage showed a celebrated World War II veteran asking for help and gasping for breath, while nursing home staff in his room laughed at him.
The video was leaked as part of a lawsuit into the death of James Dempsey, 89, of Woodstock, Ga., a decorated World War II veteran, who passed away back in February 2014. It took staff nearly an hour to call 911 after Mr. Dempsey was found unresponsive.
The hidden camera video shows Mr. Dempsey asking for help six times, before becoming unconscious while gasping for air. Lawyers representing Mr. Dempsey’s two sons and two grandchildren were successful in holding the Northeast Atlanta Health and Rehabilitation nursing home staff liable for the war veteran’s death.
Family members had installed the hidden camera in Mr. Dempsey’s room before his death. Without the footage, the family would not have known how the war veteran died or that the nursing home staff’s inexcusable actions, failure to respond and unlawful conduct caused his death.
Note: the nursing home’s lawyers attempted to keep the video sealed with an appeal, but eventually failed.
How to avoid placing your loved one in an abusive nursing home
This case alone makes you wonder: since little to no nursing homes are equipped with cameras – and surviving family members rarely get to see footage of their loved one’s death at a nursing home – how many elderly residents of these facilities die due to staff’s failure to respond?
Speaking from their own experience, Los Angeles elder abuse attorneys at JML Law, who have had an unparalleled track record of obtaining compensation for elder abuse neglect, unlawful misconduct, and other wrongdoing at nursing homes, hundreds of nearly 1.5 billion elderly residents in the U.S. may be dying due to failure to respond, failure to assess and failure to act, and other forms of elderly abuse at nursing homes, every year.
Elder abuse attorneys at JML Law perform background checks on nursing homes in Los Angeles and all across California; they examine patients’ medical records, interview nursing home residents, they look into care facility hiring practices as well as standards of care, among many other things.
Hiring a Los Angeles elder abuse attorney to perform these checks may be the only way to ensure that you’re placing your parents or grandparents in a safe, abuse-free facility.
Consult an elderly abuse lawyer by calling JML Law at 818-610-8800 today or send an email to get a free initial consultation.
