Ohio Nursing Homes Need to be Properly Staffed 24 Hours a Day, 365 Days a Year.

Here at The Dickson Firm, we receive many calls from people who have visited their loved one over the holidays and have concerns about their care. Many people do not live near enough to their loved one to see them in person on a daily basis. They talk to them over the phone. They have other family members who live close check in on them. However, when they see them in person, they often have concerns about their care.

One of the things to remember is that nursing home residents need care 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. They need the same level of care every single day. Every single day, nursing home residents who need assistance need to be helped to get up out of bed. They need help with toileting. They need help with bathing. They need help with eating. And they need the same level of help every single day. This may seem like a very simple statement. However, we see many, many nursing homes who are understaffed around the holidays.

While we certainly understand that it is challenging to maintain proper staffing around the holidays, nursing homes have an obligation to give their residents proper care at all times. Of course, people want to be home with their families on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. Of course, people want to be with their families over Thanksgiving. Of course, people want to have time off during July 4 weekend or Labor Day weekend or Memorial Day weekend.

However, it is the obligation of the owners and the operators of the nursing home to make sure that their residents receive proper care every single day. Nursing homes get paid the same amount to care for each resident every single day.

Nursing homes get paid the same amount on Christmas Day as they do on January 12 to take care of their residents. Nursing homes owe the same duty to their residents every single day. They owe a duty to their residents to keep them safe. They owe a duty to their residents to provide them with proper care. They owe a duty to their residents to make sure that their needs are met. They owe a duty to their residents to provide them with adequate supervision to prevent accidents. These duties do not change on Christmas Day or New Year's Day or during the Super Bowl. These duties are the same every single day.

If someone you love has been neglected or abused in a nursing home, please call us at The Dickson Firm at 1-800-OHIO LAW as we would be happy to talk with you and help you in any way that we can.

Nursing homes need to communicate to their staff, just like all healthcare organizations, that they have to provide the same level of care every single day. Nursing homes have to talk with their staff about the fact that people are going to have to work on Christmas Day. They are going to have to work on New Year's Day. They are going to have to work during Thanksgiving.

Healthcare workers often cannot be with their families when they would like to be because they have an obligation to take care of their residents and their patients. Everyone who works in healthcare understands this. They understand that they need to provide care to their patients and their residents at all times. This includes during the holidays.

So what can you do? If you are visiting a loved one over the holidays, make sure you go to the nursing home during all different times of the day. Make sure you go in the morning. Make sure you go at lunch time. Make sure you go in the evening. And make sure that you see an adequate number of employees taking care of the resident.

If you are sitting in your resident's room, push their call light. See how long it takes for someone to respond. If you are waiting for 30 minutes or an hour for someone to respond to a call light, imagine what goes on when you are not there. Imagine what happens when your loved one is there by themselves.

Make sure you observe your loved one at meal time. If they need help eating, is someone helping them? One of the biggest things that we see in the cases that we review are nursing homes residents who need
assistance with eating who do not get it. We review the chart of somebody who is malnourished or dehydrated and we find out that while they were supposed to have somebody help them eat every meal, often the food was just dropped off in their room where it lay uneaten until somebody took it away.

And the thing that is really troubling is that nobody recognized that the resident was not eating. The person that dropped the food off did not check their chart to see that they needed assistance with eating. And the person that picked the tray up did not note that it was untouched and did not tell anybody that that resident was not getting proper nutrition.

Nutrition and dehydration are huge problems in nursing homes. They lead to skin breakdown. They lead to infection. They lead to the resident becoming weak and less mobile, which leads to all kinds of problems. Residents who become weak and less mobile and spend more time in bed suffer more skin breakdown. They are susceptible to pneumonia. It also causes their muscles to atrophy. The more muscle a person loses, the less mobile they are, the more prone they are to fall. It makes it more difficult for them to balance.

We see many residents who were admitted to the nursing home to get physical therapy and occupational
therapy and instead, are left to sit in their bed all day without anybody providing the care and the
therapy that they need.

When you visit your loved one in the nursing home, do you see staff? Is there somebody at the nurses' station? Do you see nurses and aides walking around, going into the residents' rooms? As indicated above, when you push the call light does somebody come? At mealtimes, is somebody there to help your loved one eat?

If you are thinking about admitting someone to a nursing home, ask the director of nursing or the administrator how they maintain proper staffing during the holidays. Ask them what the staff ratios are. During the nightshift on the wing where your loved one resides, how many nurses and how many aides are on duty, and how many residents are they expected to take care of. These are very important questions.

One of the biggest causes of neglect and abuse in nursing homes is understaffing. Nursing homes simply do not have enough people to care for their residents. This is not because they cannot afford to have enough people care for their residents.

Nursing homes make millions of dollars. They purposely understaff so the nursing homes can make more money. Every nursing home only has a certain number of beds. Once those beds are filled, the nursing home is earning as much money as it can. The only way to improve profits beyond that is to reduce costs. The largest line item on any nursing home budget is staffing. Nursing homes routinely replace RNs with LPNs. They replace LPNs with nurse's aids. They staff the facility with the people who they can pay the least. This leaves the residents with very few qualified, well-trained people to take care of them. This leads to falls. It leads the residents being neglected into developing bedsores. It leads to all kinds of issues.

If someone you love has been neglected or abused in a nursing home, please call us at
The Dickson Firm at 1-800-OHIO LAW as we would be happy to talk with you and help you in
any way that we can.