Placing a beloved family member in a nursing home or assisted living facility requires immense trust. You trust that the facility and its staff will provide compassionate, competent care and ensure your loved one's safety and well-being.
Discovering that this trust has been broken and your parent, grandparent, or spouse has suffered abuse or neglect is heartbreaking and infuriating.
Unfortunately, nursing home abuse and neglect are serious problems, often stemming from understaffing, inadequate training, or simple disregard for residents' rights and needs.
At Hall & Collins Injury Lawyers, we are staunch advocates for the elderly and vulnerable residents of Athens nursing homes. Our dedicated Athens nursing home abuse lawyers fight to hold negligent facilities accountable for the harm they cause.
Contact us for a free, confidential consultation. We will help you protect your loved one and pursue legal action.
Why Choose Hall & Collins Injury Lawyers to Fight Nursing Home Abuse?
When a care facility violates your trust and harms a vulnerable family member, you need attorneys who understand both the emotional and legal dimensions of these cases. At Hall & Collins, we focus our practice on holding negligent nursing homes accountable.
Experienced in Nursing Home Cases. Our attorneys focus specifically on nursing home abuse and neglect litigation, understanding the unique challenges of these cases. We recognize facilities often attribute injuries to age or illness rather than negligence, and we have developed effective strategies to prove otherwise.
Proven Investigation Techniques. We excel at uncovering evidence that facilities attempt to conceal. Our process includes thorough record analysis, staff interviews, witness testimony collection, and collaboration with medical experts who can definitively link negligent care to resident injuries such as pressure ulcers, falls, malnutrition, or unexplained injuries.
Recent Success We recently secured substantial compensation for a family whose mother developed severe, infected pressure ulcers due to inadequate repositioning and care. Our case demonstrated the direct connection between understaffing and the resident's suffering.
Regulatory knowledge. Our team maintains comprehensive knowledge of federal and state nursing home regulations. We effectively leverage documented violations as compelling evidence in negligence cases, strengthening claims against facilities that fail to meet required standards of care.
Comprehensive Approach. We address all forms of mistreatment, including physical neglect, medication errors, emotional abuse, inadequate supervision, and financial exploitation. Our representation extends beyond compensation to helping families navigate the reporting process and ensuring improved facility practices.
Local Northeast Georgia Presence From our Athens office at 594 Oconee St, Suite 111, we serve families throughout Northeast Georgia.
Our local presence means we understand the region's care facilities and can respond quickly when families need assistance.
Contact Hall & Collins Injury Lawyers at (706) 995-2835 for a free, confidential consultation about suspected nursing home abuse or neglect.
Compensation in Nursing Home Abuse and Neglect Cases
When a nursing home's abuse or neglect causes harm to a resident, the facility can be held legally responsible for the resulting damages.
Compensation aims to cover the costs incurred due to the mistreatment and acknowledge the resident's pain and suffering. While money cannot erase the trauma, it can provide necessary resources for recovery and hold the facility accountable, potentially preventing future harm to others.
Hall & Collins Injury Lawyers pursues compensation for various types of damages, including:
- Medical Expenses: This covers all costs for treating injuries caused by abuse or neglect. Examples include emergency room visits for falls, hospitalization for infections, treatment for dehydration or malnutrition, and wound care. Physical therapy to recover lost function, and psychological counseling for trauma. Compensation includes both past and future anticipated medical costs.
- Pain and Suffering: This compensates the resident for the physical pain, emotional distress, fear, humiliation, anxiety, depression, and loss of dignity caused by the abuse or neglect. Being mistreated in a place where you are supposed to be safe is deeply traumatic, and compensation should reflect this.
- Disability or Disfigurement: If the abuse or neglect results in permanent disability (e.g., reduced mobility after a fall) or disfigurement (e.g., scarring from untreated wounds or restraints), compensation can be sought for these lasting impacts.
- Relocation Costs: If the resident needs to be moved to a different, safer facility due to abuse or neglect, compensation may cover the costs associated with the move.
- Compensation for Financial Exploitation: If the abuse involved theft of money or property, unauthorized use of credit cards, or coercion into changing wills or deeds, we pursue recovery of the stolen assets or their value.
- Wrongful Death: If the abuse or neglect tragically leads to the resident's death, the surviving family members may file a wrongful death lawsuit.
Compensation in these cases can include funeral and burial expenses, medical bills incurred before death, who pays medical bills, loss of the deceased's companionship and support, and the family's pain and suffering.
Nursing homes and their insurance companies often try to minimize these damages or deny responsibility entirely.
Our Athens nursing home abuse lawyers work diligently to document all harm and associated costs, fighting for the full compensation the resident and their families deserve for the betrayal of trust and the suffering endured.
Nursing Home Abuse and Neglect in the Athens Area
Athens and the surrounding Clarke County area are home to numerous nursing homes, assisted living facilities, and long-term care centers catering to our community's elderly population.
While many provide good care, the potential for abuse and neglect exists in any facility, regardless of its reputation or cost.
Factors like inadequate staffing levels, poor staff training, lack of supervision, and failure to conduct proper background checks on employees can create environments where mistreatment is more likely to occur.
Abuse and neglect can happen subtly or overtly. Families should be vigilant for signs of potential problems during visits. Concerns might arise from observing unexplained injuries, sudden changes in a resident's behavior or emotional state, poor hygiene, unsanitary conditions, or staff members who seem dismissive or unwilling to answer questions.
If you have concerns about the care your loved one is receiving in an Athens-area facility, it's crucial to investigate further and seek legal advice promptly. Hall & Collins Injury Lawyers can help you understand your rights and options.
Types of Nursing Home Abuse and Neglect
Nursing home mistreatment can take many forms, ranging from intentional harm to failures in providing basic care. Recognizing the different types is crucial for identifying potential problems.
- Physical Abuse: Intentional infliction of physical pain or injury. Signs include unexplained bruises, cuts, burns, broken bones, sprains, slap marks, or reports from the resident of being hit, pushed, slapped, or roughly handled.
- Emotional or Psychological Abuse: Inflicting mental pain, anguish, or distress through verbal or non-verbal acts. This includes yelling, insulting, humiliating, threatening, intimidating, isolating the resident from others, or ignoring them. Signs might be withdrawal, depression, anxiety, fear of specific staff members, or unusual rocking or mumbling.
- Sexual Abuse: Any non-consensual sexual contact. Signs can include unexplained genital infections or bleeding, bruised genitals or inner thighs, torn or stained underclothing, or a resident reporting inappropriate touching.
- Financial Exploitation: Illegal or improper use of a resident's funds, property, or assets. This can range from stealing cash or personal items to forging checks, misusing credit cards, changing wills or powers of attorney under duress, or charging for services not provided. Unexplained financial changes or missing belongings are red flags.
- Neglect: The failure of caregivers to provide the goods or services necessary to avoid physical harm, mental anguish, or illness. This is often the most common form of mistreatment and can include failure to provide adequate food and water, failure to assist with personal hygiene, or failure to provide necessary medical care. It can also include a failure to protect from safety hazards or failure to prevent pressure sores (bedsores) by not turning or repositioning immobile residents.
Often, neglect stems from systemic issues like chronic understaffing or inadequate staff training. Our Athens nursing home abuse lawyers investigate the root causes of the harm to hold the facility fully accountable.
Fighting the Nursing Home and Their Insurance Company
Pursuing a claim against a nursing home often involves facing significant resistance. Nursing homes and their corporate owners typically have substantial insurance policies and legal teams dedicated to defending against abuse and neglect allegations, which is why it’s important to understand what damages you can claim, such as medical expenses, pain and suffering, emotional distress, and in some cases, punitive damages.
Their primary goal is to protect their reputation and financial interests by denying responsibility or minimizing the perceived harm.
Common defense tactics include blaming the resident's injury or decline on their age, frailty, or pre-existing medical conditions rather than acknowledging negligent care. They might argue that a fall was unavoidable or that a bedsore had developed despite proper care.
Facilities may have incomplete or altered records, making it difficult to prove what happened. Staff members might be instructed not to speak about incidents, or turnover might be so high that knowledgeable staff are no longer employed there.
Some nursing home admission agreements contain forced arbitration clauses, which attempt to prevent families from suing in court, forcing them into a private arbitration process that can often favor the facility. Insurance adjusters for the nursing home will likely try to settle claims quickly and cheaply, before the full extent of the harm and the facility's liability is uncovered.
Our nursing home injury lawyers know how to counter these tactics. We conduct thorough investigations, often requesting extensive facility records, including staffing logs, care plans, incident reports, and internal policies.
We work with medical experts to analyze records and provide opinions, linking the resident's injuries directly to the facility's substandard care or abuse. We have experience in challenging arbitration clauses and fighting to keep your case in court where possible. We interview former employees or other witnesses when feasible.
If a fair settlement cannot be reached, we are fully prepared to take the case to trial to seek justice for your loved one, and we'll explain how much it does or doesn't cost to hire a lawyer upfront so there are no surprises as the case progresses.
What to Do If You Suspect Nursing Home Abuse or Neglect
If you suspect your loved one is being abused or neglected in an Athens nursing home, it's crucial to act promptly to protect them and preserve evidence for potential legal action.
First, ensure your loved one's immediate safety. If you believe they are in imminent danger, consider moving them from the facility if possible.
Document everything meticulously. Take detailed notes of your observations during visits: dates, times, specific signs of abuse or neglect (bruises, poor hygiene, weight loss, staff behavior), and any statements your loved one makes about their care.
Take photographs of any visible injuries, unsanitary conditions, or evidence of neglect (like unchanged bedding or full incontinence briefs). Keep a log of your communications with facility staff – dates, times, names of people you spoke with, and what was discussed or promised.
Report your concerns. Voice your concerns directly to the nursing home administration in writing and keep a copy. You should also report your concerns to the Georgia Department of Community Health's Healthcare Facility Regulation Division and the Georgia Long-Term Care Ombudsman Program.
Gather relevant records. Request copies of your loved one's medical records from the nursing home and any treating physicians or hospitals. Keep copies of the admission agreement and any other documents related to their residency. If financial exploitation is suspected, gather bank statements, credit card bills, and other relevant financial documents.
Seek medical attention for your loved one. Ensure they are examined by a doctor independent of the nursing home, especially if you suspect injuries or a decline in health due to neglect. This creates an objective medical record.
Most importantly, contact Hall & Collins Injury Lawyers immediately. Bring all your documentation, photos, notes, and records to us. Do not sign any documents offered by the nursing home or their representatives without consulting us. We can advise you on the next steps, help protect your loved one's rights, and begin the process of holding the negligent facility accountable. Acting quickly is vital, as legal deadlines apply to these cases.
Contact Our Athens Nursing Home Abuse Lawyers Today
No resident should ever suffer abuse or neglect in a place they call home. If your loved one has been harmed in an Athens nursing home or assisted living facility, our Athens nursing home abuse attorneys are here to fight for them. We are committed to holding negligent facilities accountable and securing the justice and compensation your family deserves.
Protect your loved one and seek accountability. Call Hall & Collins Injury Lawyers now at (706) 381-6055 to schedule your consultation.