It begins with a feeling of unease, a sense that something is wrong. The glossy brochure and the reassuring words from the admissions director promised a safe, caring environment.
But the reality you now see is different. It is in the unanswered calls to the nurses' station, the unexplained bruise on your mother’s arm, the noticeable weight loss, or the general sense of disorganization when you visit.
You placed your trust in a facility to care for someone you love, and you now have the sinking feeling that this trust has been broken. Widespread Pittsburgh nursing home neglect is rarely the result of one isolated mistake.
It is the predictable outcome of a business model where corporate profits are elevated above the basic human needs of the residents.
Pittsburgh Nursing Home Neglect Guide
- Pittsburgh Nursing Home Neglect Guide
- The Signs of Neglect Are Often Silent
- The Root Cause: A Business Model of Intentional Understaffing
- How a Legal Case Exposes This Systemic Failure
- Why Choose Us for a Pittsburgh Nursing Home Neglect Case?
- Frequently Asked Questions About Nursing Home Neglect Lawsuits
- Demand Accountability. Restore Dignity.
Key points about holding a nursing home accountable
A legal case for neglect is a direct challenge to a facility's corporate practices. It is a methodical process of using the law to uncover the truth and demand financial and public accountability for the harm caused.
- The case is built on a pattern of failures: A single missed medication is a mistake. A pattern of medication errors, falls, and infections points to a systemic failure. We build a case that shows how a series of small, persistent failures led to a catastrophic injury or decline in health.
- Staffing records tell the real story: Nursing homes are required to keep detailed records of their staffing levels. These documents often reveal the truth behind the promises. We analyze these records to show how the facility was operating with too few nurses and aides to safely care for its residents.
- This is about more than money: While financial compensation is a primary outcome, a lawsuit serves a greater purpose. It forces a facility to answer for its conduct, exposes dangerous practices to public scrutiny, and can create the financial pressure needed to force a change in how they operate.
- Your loved one has enforceable rights: The law grants nursing home residents the right to be free from neglect and to receive care that promotes their physical and mental well-being. A lawsuit is the mechanism for enforcing those rights when the facility has violated them.
The Signs of Neglect Are Often Silent
The most visible signs of elder abuse are undeniable, but neglect often manifests in more subtle, insidious ways. These red flags indicate that a resident's basic human needs are not being met because the staff lacks the time, training, or support to provide adequate care.
Recognizing these signs is the first step toward intervention.
- Rapid and unexplained weight loss: This is a classic sign of malnutrition and dehydration. It means staff members are not assisting residents during meals, monitoring their food and fluid intake, or addressing known problems with chewing or swallowing. A resident losing a significant amount of weight in a short time is a medical emergency that points to a systemic failure in the facility's nutrition and hydration program.
- Frequent falls: While an occasional fall can happen, a pattern of falls is a major warning sign. It suggests the facility failed to perform a proper fall-risk assessment, ignored the resident's care plan, did not use bed or chair alarms correctly, or simply lacked the staff to supervise residents who are known to be unsteady on their feet.
- Developing bedsores (pressure ulcers): A bedsore is an area of skin that breaks down when someone stays in one position for too long. Severe bedsores, those that have progressed to open wounds exposing muscle or bone, are almost always a result of neglect. They prove that staff failed to turn and reposition a bedbound resident on a regular schedule.
- Sudden changes in behavior or mood: A resident who becomes unusually withdrawn, agitated, sad, or emotionally volatile may be suffering from the deep emotional toll of neglect. These changes can be a sign of depression from being left alone, a response to untreated pain, or the result of over-medication with chemical restraints used to make residents docile for an overworked staff.
- Poor personal hygiene: When you visit, do you notice a strong smell of urine or feces in your loved one's room? Are their clothes, bedding, or wheelchair soiled? Is their appearance unkempt? These are clear indicators that staff are not providing basic, dignified care for toileting, bathing, and grooming.
- Recurrent infections: A spike in urinary tract infections (UTIs), pneumonia, or sepsis can signal neglect. UTIs can result from poor hygiene and dehydration. Pneumonia can develop if a resident is not moved or repositioned properly. Sepsis, a life-threatening condition, can arise when these infections are not caught and treated in a timely manner.
The Root Cause: A Business Model of Intentional Understaffing
The tragic stories of nursing home neglect are rarely caused by a staff of people who do not care. They are caused by a corporate structure that does not give them the time or resources to care properly.
Many long-term care facilities, especially those owned by large for-profit chains and private equity firms, operate on a model designed to maximize profits by minimizing their single biggest expense: labor.
This business model creates a dangerous environment through these common practices:
- Operating below minimum staffing levels: Management makes a calculated financial decision to staff the facility with the absolute minimum number of nurses and aides required by law, and sometimes even fewer. This means one certified nursing assistant (CNA) may be responsible for a dozen or more high-needs residents, an impossible and unsafe workload.
- Hiring less-qualified staff: To save money, facilities may hire CNAs to perform duties that should be handled by more highly trained licensed practical nurses (LPNs) or registered nurses (RNs). This creates a skills gap on the floor, especially during emergencies.
- Providing inadequate training: Staff members do not receive sufficient training on important protocols like fall prevention, wound care, dementia care, or how to operate mechanical lifts safely. This lack of training leads directly to preventable injuries.
- Ignoring high staff turnover: The stressful, low-paying environment leads to constant staff turnover. This means the residents are being cared for by a revolving door of new, inexperienced employees who are unfamiliar with their specific medical histories, personalities, and needs. This lack of continuity in care is a primary driver of medical errors and neglect.
How a Legal Case Exposes This Systemic Failure
Holding a nursing home accountable requires a deep investigation that goes far beyond a single incident. The legal process pulls back the curtain and shows a jury or mediator exactly how the corporation's decisions created the conditions for your loved one to be harmed.
- Obtaining and analyzing the records: We initiate a lawsuit and use the power of subpoena to obtain all relevant documents. This is a critical stage where the facility’s story begins to unravel. The records we demand include:
- The complete, unedited medical chart, including all physician orders, nurses' notes, and medication administration records.
- Internal incident reports related to falls, medication errors, or other events.
- Resident care plans, which outline the specific needs and interventions for your loved one.
- Daily CNA flow sheets, which document care like turning, repositioning, and toileting.
- The daily staffing schedules and payroll records for the entire facility.
- Conducting depositions: We take sworn testimony from the people involved at every level of the organization. This is a formal, out-of-court proceeding where we question witnesses under oath.
We depose the CNAs and nurses who provided hands-on care. We depose the Director of Nursing about training, supervision, and staffing policies. We question the facility Administrator about budget priorities and their knowledge of understaffing problems.
- Retaining leading medical professionals: We work with a network of respected physicians, geriatric nurses, and nursing home administration professionals.
They review all the records and provide formal written opinions that detail how the facility violated the accepted standards of medical and custodial care. These opinions explain in clear terms what the nursing home should have done and how its failures led to the injury.
- Investigating the facility's history: We research the facility's track record with the Pennsylvania Department of Health. We obtain past inspection surveys and citations, which can establish a long-standing pattern of deficiencies, understaffing, and resident harm. This evidence shows the injury to your loved one was not a surprise, but an inevitable result of the facility's ongoing failures.
Why Choose Us for a Pittsburgh Nursing Home Neglect Case?
When you decide to challenge a nursing home corporation, you need a team of trial lawyers prepared to take the case all the way to a verdict. These corporations and their insurance carriers respect strength and a documented history of success in the courtroom.
- We are trial lawyers who take on the largest for-profit nursing home chains in Pennsylvania and across the country.
- Our firm conducts deep investigations into corporate records to prove a pattern of intentional understaffing and systemic neglect.
- We retain leading medical professionals in geriatrics and long-term care to build scientifically sound cases that judges and juries find credible.
- We depose corporate executives, administrators, and floor staff to expose the financial decisions that led directly to patient harm.
- Our lawyers treat our clients' families with dignity and compassion while aggressively pursuing justice against the corporations that betrayed their trust.
- We prepare every case for trial from the very beginning, signaling to the defense that we will not accept an inadequate settlement offer.
Frequently Asked Questions About Nursing Home Neglect Lawsuits
Can we still file a lawsuit if our loved one has already passed away?
Yes. In Pennsylvania, the family or the estate of the deceased can file a wrongful death lawsuit and a survival action. The wrongful death claim seeks compensation for the family's loss of their loved one's companionship. The survival action seeks damages for the pain and suffering the resident endured as a result of the neglect before they died.
The facility told us the fall was an "unavoidable accident." How can we prove it was neglect?
This is a standard defense. We prove neglect by showing the fall was foreseeable and preventable. We use evidence like the facility's own fall-risk assessment, the lack of a proper care plan, staffing records showing no one was available to supervise, and professional testimony to prove the fall was a direct result of their failures.
We are worried about the cost of a lawsuit. How can we afford a lawyer?
We handle all nursing home neglect cases on a contingency fee basis. This means there are absolutely no upfront costs or attorney fees. We advance all the costs of litigation, such as filing fees and payments for medical professionals. We only receive a fee if and when we recover money for you through a settlement or a verdict.
My mother has dementia and cannot explain what happened. Can we still have a case?
Absolutely. Many residents in neglect cases cannot speak for themselves. The case is built on other evidence: the medical records, photographs of injuries, staffing data, and testimony from family members and medical professionals. The story is told through the documents, which often reveal a truth the facility tries to hide.
Demand Accountability. Restore Dignity.
A lawsuit for nursing home neglect is a powerful tool. It is a way to get answers when the facility refuses to provide them. It is a way to secure the financial resources needed to care for an injured loved one.
Most of all, it is a way to hold a corporation accountable and send a clear message that the health and safety of our elderly citizens cannot be sacrificed for profit.
At Pribanic & Pribanic, we give a voice to the vulnerable. We stand with families who are seeking justice for a loved one who was needlessly harmed. If you suspect neglect has occurred.
Contact our Pittsburgh office for a free, completely confidential consultation. Call Pribanic & Pribanic for a Free Consultation: (412) 281-8844