Finding the right nursing home for care
Finding the Right Nursing Home
Hi, I’m Tulsa personal injury lawyer Michael Ashworth. Today I want to talk to you because I’ve gone through this quite recently in my own life and I’ve worked with it professionally for many years. You need to find a special placement out of the home for a loved one that needs caregivers. They may need 24-7 skilled nursing, and they may need long-term care where they don’t have to have the skilled nursing levels of care, but you’ve got to find a place. What do you do?
Well, I used to be an advisor out of state in a number of states on nursing home matters and risk management, and I from time to time would test the facilities of the companies I worked for. What I would do in one state, in particular, is I’d take my driver’s license, and my photo ID and I would get a little clip, a little official-looking clip like state employees wear sometimes, and I would take my driver’s license and I would clip it on as it looked like some official ID, and it was my Oklahoma driver’s license.
Well, at the time I did this the first time I was not in Oklahoma, I was in a different state, and I walked in and said, I’m from the Department of Health and I want to see files right now and I might pick them at random. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Okay, give me a room, leave me alone, let me go through them. Well, guess what? That was a violation of federal HIPAA regulations. So I would make recommendations to the management and we would go ahead and change things and teach our people better, but I can’t tell you the number of times I got away with that.
Ensuring Quality Care
Now, that is something that sounds like, well, so what, you’re catching them on regulatory stuff. No, I was also catching them on stuff that they weren’t charting, they weren’t doing correctly, they were not turning people, they were not giving them the services they needed, they had fall risks that were not being adequately protected with a low bed or a bed alarm, and they may fall. And falls are the number one, the two causes of death most often in nursing homes, unless they’re hospice care nursing homes, generally are going to be some level of infection through skin breakdown or something like that, or falls. I mean, they’re like neck and neck.
So if you have a loved one or your friend has a loved one or you yourself have full cognition, but you’re in a nursing home and you’re just not getting the treatment you’re supposed to be getting by law and just by good human kindness, give me a call.
Free Consultation
Once again, I’m Michael Ashworth. Reach out to me at TulsaPersonalInjuryLawyer.pro or at 918-924-5528 and let’s schedule a free consultation to discuss your situation and how I can help you ensure your loved one receives the proper care they deserve.
