Scott M. Kuboff, Esq. is a Chardon Ohio Nursing Home Infection Attorney with the law firm of Lowe Scott Fisher Co, LPA who helps his clients receive fair and just compensation for injuries resulting from infections in Ohio’s nursing homes.
INFECTIONS IN NURSING HOMES
Every nursing home must provide a safe, sanitary and comfortable environment and to help prevent the development and transmission of disease and infection. Residents have the right to receive adequate medical treatment and appropriate nursing care.
Residents can develop infections inside nursing homes from a number of causes including:
Urinary or fecal incontinence
Catheters and stomas
Bedsores or other skin wounds
Incisions
Underlying medical conditions
Other accidents
Communicable diseases
To prevent infections, nursing homes should evaluate each resident’s clinical condition and risk factors for infection and implement appropriate interventions consistent with the resident’s needs, goals, and care standards. Remaining vigilant, employing proper hygiene standards, timely changing sheets, replacing catheters, repositioning residents, and changing dressing help reduce the risk of infections. Any resident who has an infection must receive appropriate care and services to promote healing and prevent worsening condition.
Infection Control Program
Nursing homes must establish and infection control program to investigate, control, and prevent infections within the facility as well as develop procedures should be applied to individual residents to prevent the spread of infection.
When the infection control program determines a resident needs isolation to prevent the spread of infection, the nursing home must isolate the resident. Staff members with communicable diseases or infected skin lesions must not have direct contact with the residents or their food if direct contact will transmit the disease.
The nursing home must require staff members to wash their hands after direct contact with a resident for which hand washing in indicated according to accepted standards. Further, nursing homes must insure their staff members employ proper use of gloves, i.e. change after each task and after each resident, when the use of gloves is indicated.
Nursing homes must handle, store, process and transport soiled linens so as to prevent the spread of infections throughout the facility.
COIVD-19 Exposure and Death
Tragically, the COVID-19 pandemic has taken a significant toll on the elderly population and has devastated nursing home residents. Despite the fact that any legal claim against a nursing home is judged upon what the standard of care requires under like or similar circumstances, the Ohio General Assembly passed H.B. 606 which provides civil immunity for negligence for a broad range of health care providers, including nursing homes, if a resident is exposed, contracts or dies from COVID-19.
House Bill 606 became effective on December 16, 2020, and covers acts and omissions from March 9, 2020 through September 30, 2021; after which the bill ceases to be in effect.
If an resident was exposed, contracted or died from COVID-19, he or she must prove the nursing home was reckless. Recklessness has been defined as a perverse disregard of a known risk or that the individual is aware that his or her conduct will in all probability result in injury.
Nursing Home Abuse
Understaffing, poor training, and inattention lead to elderly residents needlessly suffering from infections with the accompanying pain, loss of limb or death. A Chardon Ohio nursing home abuse lawyer will advocate for your loved one and hold the nursing home accountable.
