DO YOU SUSPECT ABUSE OR NEGLECT? Contact Us for a Free Consultation

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polst-logo-2x-300x92A significant update to California’s POLST framework is moving steadily through the state legislature. Senate Bill 1088, authored by Catherine Blakespear and sponsored by the Coalition for Compassionate Care of California (CCCC), has received overwhelming bipartisan support and is expected to bring several important improvements to how POLST forms are used throughout the state.

For years, POLST has stood for “Physician Orders for Life Sustaining Treatment.” These forms serve an important role in documenting a patient’s wishes regarding emergency medical interventions, resuscitation, hospitalization, and other end of life care decisions. However, SB 1088 recognizes that the current framework can be improved to better reflect modern healthcare practices and patient autonomy.

One of the most visible changes proposed by the bill is a new meaning for the POLST acronym. Under SB 1088, POLST would stand for “Portable Orders Listing Scope of Treatment.” This change reflects the reality that POLST forms are no longer exclusively completed by physicians. Nurse practitioners and physician assistants may also participate in the process under California law. The updated terminology is also intended to remove the potentially misleading phrase “life sustaining treatment,” which can imply that every medical intervention will meaningfully extend life. In many situations, particularly for frail elderly patients with advanced illness, interventions such as CPR may be unlikely to achieve that outcome.

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Nursing homes and assisted-living facilities in Sonoma County and throughout the Bay Area should be places where all residents receive the level and degree of care that meets their needs, and where all potential injury hazards are eliminated or minimized through staff attention to residents. Yet much too frequently, older adults in nursing homes and assisted-living facilities suffer serious and life-threatening injuries in avoidable falls. While falls can have many different causes, an issue that is becoming more common in the conversation about nursing home safety and negligence is the level of lighting in private and community areas. What should you know about lighting levels and nursing home falls? Our Sonoma County nursing home negligence lawyers can tell you more. 

Falls in Nursing Homes Impacting Elderly Residents

Falls in general can be devastating to older adults, much more so than to younger adults who sustain fall-related injuries. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), millions of adults aged 65 and older fall every year, and those falls result in about three million emergency department visits. 

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brandon-holmes-199535-unsplash-copy-300x200How Skilled Nursing Facility Understaffing Leads to Serious Injuries and Wrongful Death

Families place enormous trust in skilled nursing facilities. When an elderly loved one enters a nursing home, families expect that the facility will provide adequate staffing, proper supervision, timely medical care, and basic human dignity. Unfortunately, that trust is often broken in understaffed nursing homes across California.

At many facilities, chronic understaffing is not an accident. It is part of a business model designed to reduce labor costs and increase profits. Residents are left waiting for assistance, basic care needs go unmet, and preventable injuries occur every day.

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CallLight-300x170For a vulnerable resident in a skilled nursing facility, the bedside call button is not a luxury or a simple convenience—it is an absolute lifeline. When a resident presses that button, they are signaling a vulnerable need for assistance with basic human functions, acute pain management, or an immediate medical emergency. Yet, one of the most pervasive complaints from families throughout California involves unanswered call lights.

When minutes feel like hours to a resident in distress, delayed response times are rarely just a matter of poor customer service. Instead, they are frequently the direct manifestation of systemic nursing home staffing negligence. When facilities chronically understaff their shifts to maximize corporate profits, residents pay the price in safety, dignity, and all too often, their lives.

The Devastating Dangers of Delayed Responses

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Wheelchair-300x200When families entrust the care of their elderly or vulnerable loved ones to skilled nursing

facilities, they expect a baseline standard of safety. We expect clean rooms, competent medical

oversight, attentive staff, and a secure environment that can withstand external crises. However,

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Hip fractures are among the most serious types of broken bone injuries, and they are especially common among older adults. In addition to being common among the elderly, hip fractures are a leading cause of poor outcomes for those elderly patients, as UCLA Health explains. While older adults can fall in various situations without another party being liable, when falls and hip fractures happen in nursing homes, the facility is almost always responsible for the fall due to negligence. Our Marin County nursing home neglect lawyers can tell you more about hip fractures in nursing home falls and why you may be able to hold the facility accountable for an elderly parent’s life-altering injury.

Why Are Hip Fractures So Dangerous for Nursing Home Residents?

Hip fractures can happen at any age due to trauma in a serious fall from heights or in a motor vehicle crash, for example, but they are especially dangerous when they result from an older adult’s same-level fall. 

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Nursing-HomeFamilies are often told that a loved one is “stable for discharge” from the hospital and ready to transition into a nursing home or rehabilitation facility. But what many families do not realize is that the timing of that transfer can dramatically increase the risk of neglect, injury, and even death.

At Nursing Home Law Group, we have represented victims of nursing home neglect and malpractice throughout California for more than 30 years. Over and over again, we have seen serious injuries occur when residents are admitted to facilities on Fridays, holiday weekends, Christmas, New Year’s, Thanksgiving, or other periods when staffing is stretched thin.

In our experience, these admissions can create dangerous gaps in care that place vulnerable elderly residents at serious risk.

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What does social media have to do with nursing home abuse and neglect in Fremont or elsewhere in the Bay Area? The two things — social media and nursing home abuse — might not seem like they would have any relation to one another. However, as various types of social media platforms have become increasingly popular among wide-ranging age groups, and forms of psychological and emotional abuse continue to occur in nursing home and assisted-living facility settings, the two things have, unfortunately, coincided. 

According to a recent report from McKnight’s Long-Term Care News, more than 10 years after a large-scale investigation addressed nursing home staff members posting humiliating, belittling, and embarrassing photos of residents on social media accounts, this behavior persists. Our Fremont nursing home abuse and neglect lawyers can tell you more about the recent report, and we can help you to seek accountability if this type of unconscionable act has harmed an elderly loved one in your family.

Harms of Psychological and Emotional Abuse

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jeremy-wong-298986-copy-300x200If you suspect that your loved one has been sexually assaulted in a nursing home or assisted living facility, trust that instinct. Families often notice subtle changes first. A once-engaged parent becomes withdrawn. There are unexplained injuries, fear around certain staff members, or sudden emotional distress. These are not things to ignore.

Sexual assault in a care facility is one of the most serious forms of elder abuse. It is also one of the most underreported.

This Should Never Happen

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file0001748266226-300x225A recent investigation by KFF Health News sheds light on a troubling trend in long-term care: real estate investors are increasingly purchasing nursing homes and assisted living facilities, sometimes with devastating consequences for residents. As these financial structures grow more complex, families are left wondering who is truly responsible when care fails.

At the center of the reporting is the heartbreaking story of Pearlene Darby, an 81-year-old retired teacher. According to the article by KFF Health News, Darby suffered severe, preventable pressure injuries while living at a Sacramento facility. By the time she was hospitalized in 2020, she had open sores on multiple parts of her body and a large wound on her tailbone. She died just two weeks later from infections linked to those injuries. Her daughter filed a lawsuit alleging neglect, including claims that Darby was repeatedly left sitting in her own waste.

This is not an isolated story. Another family, represented by Leslie Adams, secured a $17 million verdict after his mother, Shirley, died from infected bedsores at a rehabilitation center. Yet even with a substantial judgment, the family has struggled to collect. These cases illustrate a recurring issue in elder care litigation: accountability becomes murky when ownership and operations are split between multiple entities.

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