Gilbert Nursing Home Abuse Lawyers

Facts About Nursing Home Abuse in Arizona

Arizona has an agency called Adult Protective Services, or APS. They are in charge of collecting research and they’ve shown that there is an alarming number of cases every year that pertain to neglect and abuse. There are over 4,000 investigations in the most recent annual report for abuse. There are over 10,000 investigations including neglect and exploitation.

Among these reports of abuse, around 40% of them were made by people in the medical or social service departments.

Most of the victims were female which might be related to the fact that women tend to live longer than men. This could account for women being victims more often than men.

In addition, they discovered that those who were guilty of neglect and abuse not only were employed in nursing homes, but were family members and in-home caregivers.

The majority of the victims of neglect and abuse were over the age of 60 years old; however, the abuse of disabled people can happen at any age when they are living in an assisted living care center.

What is an Arizona Special Focus Facility?

Every year, there are unscheduled visits conducted in nursing homes all over the country that are designed to make sure that people are safe and cared for and that these nursing homes are doing their due diligence to provide quality care. There have been hundreds of nursing homes in Arizona that have scored the lowest possible score, which means that they are not keeping up with their diligence to protect and ensure the safety of the residents. When nursing homes have a low score, that typically means that there are issues with the building or their hygiene maintenance, as well as safety issues like fire hazards. Some places have been scored so low that they are called special focus facilities.

If a place is deemed to be a special focus facility, they are given opportunities to try to redeem themselves. There is a time period in which they will be closely monitored and will be listed as a special focus facility for the public to see when people are looking into where to put their loved ones.

Some special focus facilities have been able to resolve the infractions and remove themselves from the list. We want you to know this — just because the nursing home that your loved one is at is not currently listed as a special focus facility does not mean that it didn’t used to be in the past. We strongly urge you to get in contact with our Gilbert nursing home abuse lawyers as soon as possible so that we can look into your claim.

Laws in Arizona to Protect Victims of Nursing Home Abuse

As stated previously, there are laws in Arizona that are designed to help protect the elderly from experiencing abuse and neglect as well as exploitation while they are residing in a nursing home. These laws pertain to anyone who works in a nursing home as well as family members who are caregivers to the elderly and anyone who is paid to come into the home to take care of an elderly patient. The laws in Arizona state that elder abuse as well as nursing home neglect is defined as the following:

• Abuse: The law in Arizona says that abuse can be categorized as someone being intentionally harmed, someone getting injured due to being neglected, someone being confined in an unjust way, or sexual abuse as well as sexual assault.
• Neglect: As per the law in Arizona, neglect can be described as someone depriving another of something that can cause physical harm or emotional distress. That can include preventing someone from having food or water, as well as medical services and medication. Neglect also exists in the form of not maintaining the living space of the person. Neglect could be not maintaining the temperature of a room.
• Exploitation: As per Arizona law, exploitation can be described as someone taking advantage of another person who is incapacitated in a way that is illegal. Some examples of exploitation include an elderly person being manipulated into giving away their information for their finances or being coerced into providing financial information for someone else’s financial gain

Do you believe that your loved one has been experiencing any of these types of nursing home abuse, neglect, or exploitation? Please get in contact with us right away. These are violations of state and federal laws and can be possibly acted against with the full extent of the law.

Our Attorneys Also Focus On The Following Practice Areas:

• Burn Injury
• Car Accident
• Construction Accident
• Dog Bite
• Motorcycle Accident
• Slip and Fall
• Traumatic Brain Injury
• Truck Accident
• Workers’ Compensation
• Wrongful Death

Call Our Gilbert Nursing Home Abuse Lawyers Today

If you have a loved one who you believe was subjected to nursing home abuse or neglect in Arizona, please do not hesitate to reach out to our Gilbert personal injury lawyers. We want to hear from you as soon as you suspect that your loved one is suffering. We know that this is a very difficult time for you and we want to make this process easy for you. We fight tirelessly to get justice when people have been wrong and we want to provide you that same justice we have provided so many before you. Please give us a call as soon as possible to set up your first free consultation.

Frequently Asked Questions for Our Nursing Home Abuse Attorneys in Gilbert, AZ

What mistakes should I avoid during a nursing home abuse case?

People often ask what are the most common mistakes that people make when their loved one may have been abused or neglected in a nursing home in Arizona. The most common mistake is not trusting your instinct or your gut. You know something’s not right with your loved one’s situation. They were in good condition, good health, and now their health is declining rapidly. They won’t eat, and before they had a good appetite. Trust that feeling and give us a call. We can help you verify that they really aren’t getting the care they need, and we can get them out of that facility to a better facility. We know the ones that have the most complaints and the better ones, so we’ll share that information with you for free.

Go with your instinct if you feel like there’s just something not right. If you feel that something is not right, you call us, and we’ll help you check that out. Remember, the call is free, the information’s free, and it can make the difference between your loved one’s life and death. It’s that important.

How long does a nursing home negligence case take?

People often ask how long it will take to resolve a claim, especially in situations where the negligence and the abuse have been going on and on for a long time. Because we have very experienced lawyers on our nursing home abuse legal team, if you call in, they’d be happy to give you an answer tailored to the specific situation, but in general, if you talk to one of our attorneys, here’s what they say. They say that it’s very common for the nursing home to try to cover up what happened, to downplay it, to paper it over, to get a medical doctor to sign off on a death certificate without even examining the body.

Those are all common things, so it often takes a while for us to sort out the truth.
Remember, you have a situation involving suspected abuse, give us a call. We can help you out. We can help you out with investigators. We’ve had families find out that their loved one was getting abused and neglected and gotten them out while they still could recover, and other families didn’t find out until it was too late. There’s varying time to settle the claim, but the most important thing is to gather the information and have us help you. We can prove the neglect, and then we’ll help you get them out of that situation because those nursing home facilities, they will want to hang on to those patients because why? They see them as dollars and cents. They’re your loved one, not dollars and cents. Give us a call. The call is free, the information’s free, and it could make a difference between life and death for your loved one.

How do I report nursing home abuse?

The question often comes up where people tell us they suspect a loved one is being abused or neglected in a nursing home, but they have no proof. In that situation, if you talk to one of our attorneys, what they will tell you is – it’s absolutely our entire firm would say this – is if you feel in your heart, your gut that something’s not right, and your loved one may be abused or neglected, do not ignore that feeling. Let me repeat that. Do not ignore that feeling. Give us a call and we’ll be able to help you investigate that.

There are ways using hidden cameras to protect your loved one. There are ways we can review the charts to look at the medical procedures and checks that are being done. It’s very, very common after nursing home abuse has resulted in the death of a loved one for the staff to get together and fix the medical records. Call us right away because we can help you get those records sometimes before they make those corrections. If you suspect abuse, call us so that we can help you determine if it’s true. More often than not if you suspect there’s abuse, there is abuse, they may say to explain the marks or your loved one as “normal.” It’s not normal. They’ll hide the truth. Call us. We’ll give you the benefit of our experience. The call is free, the information’s free, and if your loved one is still alive, that call may save their life.

How do I determine the value of a nursing home abuse case?

As far as the value of cases, it depends on what a jury would decide and varies from case to case. It’s a guarantee, however, that if there’s a hidden video of your loved one getting slapped or harmed, that’s going to make every juror extremely angry, and that case is going to be settled for a lot more money than if it was in maybe a different circumstance. Even for pressure sores and ulcers, when we blow up those pictures and the infection has gone into the bone, it looks so nasty that many jurors just turn away, thinking that there but for the grace of god goes their own grandmother or brother. Those cases settle for more money.

That’s a big part of it — the conduct of the nursing home staff or the lack of care and the damages and the injuries that they inflict. If you want to know what the value of your nursing home abuse case is for your loved one, call us and talk to one of our attorneys. The call is free. The information is free. It can be invaluable, and if your loved one is still alive, it may not be too late for you and us to save their life, so call us now.

How do I choose the best attorney for my nursing home negligence case?

That is a very important question, and it’s asked always by potential clients when they contact our law firm. Just the other day they asked one of our attorneys that question, and this is what an attorney responded. The first thing you want to do is ask how many nursing home abuse cases the law firm has handled because most personal injury law firms handle close to zero. That’s not the number you want.

They’ll probably not make a big deal about that. You might hear them hemming and hawing and saying well, yeah, we’ve handled a few. You want to be more specific? Whatever they say, two, three, six, ask if they can discuss what kind of results they got. That’s when you really want to listen. If they are not able to discuss the exact dollar amounts in confidential settlements, but they can still tell you about what happened. If they just don’t have much to tell you in that regard, keep looking. That’s the first thing. You want experienced nursing home abuse attorneys.

Next, when you talk to a law firm and make sure they’re experienced, make sure that they realize it’s not just about the money when you lose your loved ones. Not at all. If you have a situation of nursing home abuse, call us. The call is free. The information is free. We’ll share with you some other experiences, and we’ll share from our hearts, and you can tell if we care about you, we care about what happened to your loved one, and that will help you make the right decision. The call is free. The information is free. Call us because we really do care about you and your loved one.