- Speak to a qualified and knowledgeable attorney who has experience handling nursing home cases.
Why? Because a family who has no experience with nursing home abuse or neglect is at a severe disadvantage 0″on its own when dealing with the nursing home itself after an unfortunate tragedy occurs. In other words, the nursing home knows the rules of its profession and typically families do not. This is why you need to make sure you consult with an attorney who can put you on a level playing field with the nursing home.
- Seek answers as to the cause of an injury.
Oftentimes, especially in cases involving falls inside of nursing homes, the cause of an injury or death can unfortunately be obscured by other comorbidities which a patient may have. It is therefore important after an injury or death inside a nursing home to understand the specific sequence of events which led to the injury or death.
Again, this is often best accomplished through the utilization of a qualified attorney, like Rob King and Associates, Trial Lawyers.
- Make sure the nursing home preserves relevant evidence.
Again, hiring a qualified attorney can help assist with preserving evidence, but if you did not have the immediate ability to hire an attorney, be sure to put a nursing home on notice in writing that you want relevant evidence preserved.
What is relevant evidence? Well, this can be a difficult question to answer sometimes. But generally, you want all medical charting preserved; any video evidence preserved; any audio evidence preserved; call logs preserved and incident reports too. Sometimes, these items of evidence are destroyed after a certain time period. Therefore, it is critically important to get your notification out to the nursing home’s executive team as quickly as possible.
Hopefully, your family will never experience a situation where a loved one suffers nursing home neglect or abuse.
However, in the unfortunate event that they do, here are the top three things to do:
Again, the most important action item on the list above is speaking with a qualified attorney who is more knowledgeable about the process than you. By doing that, you entrust your case to capable hands and hopefully gain some peace of mind in what is very trying time.