What Can I Do if My Loved One is a Resident of a Nursing Home and at Risk for Falls?

By nursing home abuse attorney, Blake Dickson

I spent the last few days working on a very significant fall case. We represent the family of a woman who was a resident of a nursing home. She was a very high risk for falls.

Tragically, she was allowed to fall twenty five (25) times in the nursing home over a period of time. The nursing home completely failed her. And it made me think of all the different ways that a family can intervene and help keep their loved one safe if they are in a nursing home and they are at risk for falls.

First and foremost, if you are admitting someone into a nursing home, we always recommend that you start with www.Medicare.gov and make a list of all the nursing homes close to you, based on their five star rating.

You can first look up all the nursing homes within 25 miles of you or 50 miles of you. Then, you can put that list in order of the nursing home's five star rating with the best rated nursing homes at the top.

You can then work your way to through the five star nursing homes that are close to you. Having narrowed it down from there you can visit each of these nursing homes, talk with the administrator and/or the director of nursing and discuss your loved one's care.

As you can see you can filter the nursing homes by their Overall Rating. You can also filter by their Health Inspection Rating, their Staffing Rating or their Quality Measures. You can also filter the nursing homes based on size. The search above is for all nursing homes within twenty five (25) miles of Cleveland, Ohio. You can limit your search to a five (5) mile radius. You can expand your search to a two hundred (200) mile radius. The web site also shows each nursing home on a map.

It is very important to place your loved one close to friends and family. One of the best ways to insure that your loved one is receiving proper care is for as many people to visit that person as possible.

Friends and family should visit at all times of the day. Some one should go in the morning when they get the resident up on some days. Some one else should go during meal times like breakfast, lunch and dinner to make sure they are getting adequate assistance with meals.

Some one else should visit in the mid afternoon to see if your loved one is being provided with proper care. Is the nursing home just leaving them sitting in a chair or are they engaging them in activities? Are they getting therapy? Are they moving?

You can help keep your loved one from falling in a number of different ways. First and foremost when you admit your loved one to a nursing home or when you visit a nursing home to potentially admit your loved one to the nursing home, you need to ask the administrator and/or the director of nursing what the plan is to keep your loved one safe. Nursing homes are legally required to provide each and every one of their residents with adequate supervision. How are they going to provide your loved one with adequate supervision?

There are a variety of ways that they can accomplish this. They can use alarms. There are alarms that consist of a pressure pad that goes under their butt when they are sitting in a chair or wheelchair and goes under their body when they are laying in bed. When the resident starts to get up they take pressure off the pad and the alarm goes off.

The staff then must promptly attend to them to make sure they don't get all the way up and try to walk if they are not able to walk safely on their own. The nursing home needs to be properly staffed. You should definitely ask the director of nursing and/or the administrator if the nursing home is properly staffed.

You should also ask other staff members who you meet if the nursing home is properly staffed. As you walk around the nursing home, do you see staff? Are there nurses at the nursing station? Are there nurses and aids in the various resident's rooms? Are there nurses walking up and down the hallway.

If your loved one is already in a nursing home, sit in their room and push the call button. How long does it take someone to respond? If your loved one has a fall alarm, set it off. Have them take pressure off it and see how quickly the staff gets there.

If someone you love has been neglected or abused in a nursing home, please call us here 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.

Some nursing homes will tell you that alarms are restraints. This is 100% not true. This is an excuse made up by the nursing homes to justify not using alarms.

It is our belief at The Dickson Firm that they do not use alarms because alarms help us prove liability in fall cases. If they had access to fall alarms and they did not use them, that is absolutely negligent. If they did use the alarm and it went off for an extended period of time and nobody responded to the resident promptly, that is also clear negligence and probably evidence of understaffing.

Alarms are not restraints. The argument is that the alarm goes off and it scares the resident and they are afraid to get up. That is not a restraint. Physical restraints are prohibited. Alarms are absolutely not prohibited. Further, there are alarms where you can record your voice telling your loved one to sit down and wait for help. If any nursing home ever tells you that an alarm is a restraint, asked them if they have tried an alarm with your loved one. Odds are the answer will be no. If they do not use alarms, then you need to ask them how they are providing your loved one with adequate supervision. How are they keeping an eye on your loved one when they are in their room? How do they know if your loved one is getting up in the middle of the night to try and go to the bathroom? How do they know if your loved one is walking in their room by themselves.

In the case I was just working on, the resident literally suffered twenty five (25) falls. All the falls were unwitnessed. She was perpetually found having fallen in her room. Often she was trying to go to the bathroom. At other times she was getting up from a chair and going to bed etc. The nursing home utterly failed to implement any of a number of available interventions that could have kept this woman safe and prevented her from falling and suffering a fatal injury.

Nursing homes can also use motion detectors that alert them if somebody is up and around in their room.

Nursing homes can also use cameras to keep an eye on the residents.

You need to ask the nursing home how they are going to provide your loved one with adequate supervision to prevent actions.

Next, if your loved one is in the nursing home when they are supposed to be receiving therapy, make sure they are getting the therapy. Therapy helps residents to become stronger. The stronger a resident is, the less likely it is they are going to fall. If they are neglecting your loved one and they are just leaving them laying in bed all day they are going to get weaker and that is going to increase their risk of falling.

If your loved one has a fall, you need to ask the nursing home what they are going to do going forward to keep your loved one safe. This is the biggest problem in the case I am working on right now, is that the nursing home never updated the care plan after any of the falls.

Every time a resident has a fall the nursing should conduct a meeting of the Interdisciplinary Team and come up with additional interventions to keep the resident safe. The nursing home never did that in the case I am working on. As a result, this woman fell again and again and again. She ultimately suffered a head injury and she died. If your loved one has a fall, even if they do not suffer any injury from the fall, you need to ask the nursing home what they are going to do differently to prevent future falls.

The nursing home should also be scheduling care conferences with you to discuss your loved one's care. If your loved one has a fall, there should be a care conference after that fall during which you are consulted about your loved one's ongoing care.

Nursing homes are legally obligated to perform a comprehensive assessment of each and every resident, to analyze all of their needs, and then to come up with a comprehensive care plan that addresses those needs. Ask to see your loved one’s care plan. What does it say? What does it recommend? What are the interventions that are put in place to keep your loved one from falling? Are they generic interventions? Is it a generic care plan that would apply to all residents? Or is it specific to your loved one. It is supposed to be specific to your loved one. Is it?

Another way to prevent falls is to anticipate your loved one's needs. So for example, if your loved one is up in their room every night at 3:00 a.m. because they have to go to the bathroom, the nursing home should toilet them every night at 2:45 a.m. and anticipate their need to go to the bathroom. If your loved one is up walking around the room because they are bored, your loved one should be engaged in activities. The nursing home should make sure that your loved one has whatever they need within easy reach. If they need to reach the television remote, or a book or their reading glasses, those items should all be kept in reach.

You must talk with the nursing home after any fall that your loved one suffers even if they do not suffer any injury. You must find out what the plan is to prevent future falls.

Falls can absolutely be fatal for an elderly nursing home resident. A hip fracture can be fatal. A head injury can clearly be fatal. Any type of significant injury may limit their mobility. This increases their risk for pneumonia. It increases their risk for skin breakdown. And it puts them at risk for future problems. Falls are very serious problems in nursing homes and they must be handled that way by the nursing home taking care of your loved one.

Read more of our nursing home fall articles here:

Falls in Nursing Homes Are Preventable With Adequate Supervision
Ohio Nursing Home Falls Often Result in Life Changing Consequences for Seniors
Can Falls Be Prevented in a Nursing Home?

Checklist of Things That You Can Do if Someone You Love is in a Nursing Home and They Are at Risk for Elopement

We have posted numerous blogs on this website about elopement. As we have said many times, elopement typically refers to two people who have decided to travel to some location and get married, usually alone or with a small group of people, as opposed to having a large wedding.

Elopement in the nursing home industry means when a resident leaves the facility unattended. There are numerous residents who cannot leave the nursing home unattended. Some are confused. They have dementia. Some have other issues. Some have physical limitations.

There was a tragic case just recently where a woman at a nursing home in Warrensville, OH walked out the door and sat down on the patio and tragically froze to death. The nurse who was supposed to be taking care of her is now being criminally charged for her death.

The purpose of this blog is to give you a checklist of things that you can do if someone you love is in a nursing home and they are at risk for elopement. What do you do if your loved one is in a nursing home and they cannot leave that nursing home safely on their own?

1) Ask the nursing home to show you the individualized care plan for your resident.
Every nursing home is supposed to conduct a comprehensive assessment of each resident, and based on that comprehensive assessment, develop an individualized care plan that addresses all of the resident’s needs. Nursing homes are legally obligated to create an individualized care plan with measurable objectives and timetables for each resident. Ask the nursing home to show you your loved one's individualized care plan and ask them to point out to you the interventions that are in place to prevent your loved one from leaving the facility unattended.

2) Know where your loved one's room is located within the nursing home.
Where is your loved one's room? Is it close to the nursing station? Is it at the end of the hallway? Is it near a door? Talk with the nursing home about the location of your loved one's room. The closer to the nurses' station, the closer to the interior of the nursing home and the farther away from the exit doors, the safer your loved one will be.

3) Test the doors of their room.
Test the doors. Can your loved one simply leave the nursing home? If you walk out of your loved one's room, where is the closest door that leads to the outside? Is that door locked? Can you just open that door and find yourself outside. If you do open that door and find yourself outside, does the door lock behind you? Can you get back in? If the door is not locked on the inside but does lock once it is closed, it presents a grave risk to your loved one that they could go through that door and find themselves locked out of the nursing home. If that happens in the inclement weather, this could be a fatal danger to your loved one. The temperature is supposed to be -4 degrees tomorrow. No one can be outside in that weather. Further, your loved one will likely wander outside not dressed appropriately. They will likely simply have on what they wear in the nursing home. They certainly will not have a heavy coat and boots on. They may be in their slippers. They may be barefoot. This increases their risk when they are outside in cold weather.

4) Does the nursing home have enough staff to properly take care of its residents?
Ensure that the nursing home always has enough staff to monitor the residents and keep them safe. Nursing homes are legally obligated to provide their residents with adequate supervision. They are legally obligated to provide their residents with a safe environment. They absolutely cannot do that if they do not have enough staff. Does the nursing home where your loved one is a resident have enough staff? When you walk through the halls of the nursing home to get to your loved one's room, do you see nurses and aides walking through the hallways, in the residents' rooms? Do you see nurses at the nurses' station? If you are in your loved one's room and you push the call light, does someone come promptly? Does someone respond to that light? How long does it take for someone to respond? When you are visiting for your loved one, particularly if you are visiting with them for an extended period of time, do staff come in the room to check on your loved one? If you visit your loved one during meal time, is someone helping them eat? Is someone monitoring them?

5) Do the doors that lead outside stay locked or have alarms on them?
With respect to the doors, if the doors do open and they are not locked, do they have alarms on them? If they do have alarms and you open the door and the alarm goes off, does the staff attend to that door? Do they come running? An alarm is not of much value if nobody responds to it. So you need to check and see if the staff is responding to the call light when it is pushed and if they are responding to the door alarms.

6) Does the nursing home have a video monitoring system?
Ask the nursing home if they have a video monitoring system on the exterior doors that can be monitored from a central location? This is a very simple and very inexpensive system. We have a camera system in our office. We can see who is outside the door, we can see who is in our lobby. There is no reason for a nursing home not to have a simple system of cameras to keep an eye on all of their doors.

7) Does the nursing home have a system of regular bed checks and room checks?
Ask the nursing home if they have a system of regular bed checks and room checks? How often do they check on the residents in their rooms? How often are they supposed to check on the residents? How often are they actually checking on the residents? Ask the nursing home to show you documentation of how often your loved one was checked on over the course of the past week. They should have clear documentation of every time they checked on them.

8) Have there been incidents of wandering?
Ask the nursing home if they document incidents of wandering. What happens if your loved one is found wandering the hallways? What happens if your loved one is found in the dining room at 2:00 in the morning? What happens if your loved one goes out the door? Do they document the incident? Do they update the care plan? Do they contact the family members? Ask them what their policies are. Ask them to show you their policies.

9) Does the staff receive regular training about the risks of elopement?
Ask the nursing home if they provide the staff with regular training relative to the risks associated with elopement. Is the staff being trained? Do they offer training programs? Does the staff who is taking care of your loved one attend those training programs?

10) Does the nursing home have care policies related to the risks of elopement?
Ask the nursing home to show you their patient care policies relative to elopement. Do they have patient care policies relative to elopement? Ask them to show you. Elopement can be fatal. We get calls on a regular basis from family members who are heartbroken because their loved one has eloped out of the facility and died as a result. They have fallen down and suffered a fracture. They have succumbed to the elements. They have wandered into traffic. They have drowned in a nearby pool or pond. We have heard many tragic stories involving elopement.

Elopement can be prevented. With some simple safety measures and some proper staffing, elopement can be prevented. If someone you love is in a nursing home, you need to find out from the nursing home what they are doing to keep your loved one safe. If they do not have answers to your questions, move your loved one to a safer facility.

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.

Elopement in Ohio Nursing Homes Can Quickly Lead to Resident Injuries or Death

We have written many times on this website about elopement. Elopement typically means when two people run off and get married in some remote location. Tragically, in the nursing home industry, elopement means when someone who cannot leave the facility safely, leaves the facility unattended.

The winter weather creates a particular danger with respect to elopement. Temperatures have been in the single digits lately. This is a concern for everyone. My children's school was closed because the school did not want young kids waiting for the bus in such frigid temperatures. The same frigid temperatures pose a very real and very serious threat to nursing home residents who should not be allowed to leave the nursing home unattended.

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.

Recently, an Ohio nursing home allowed an 84-year-old woman to walk out of the facility through an exit door that closed and locked behind her. She tragically froze to death on the patio. Alvera Meuti was at The Avenue at Warrensville Care and Rehabilitation Center in Cleveland, Ohio when she disappeared from her room on the night of December 23, 2024.

A nurse at the facility, Amber Henderson, is facing a felony count of involuntary manslaughter in connection with Meuti's death. She is named in the family's complaint as a defendant along with the nursing home for her alleged failure to report Meuti's disappearance and provide her with adequate supervision.

At 9:30 p.m. on December 23, 2024, Amber Henderson went into Alvera Meuti's room and Ms. Meuti was not there. And yet, Amber Henderson did not make any report. She did not take any action. She did not contact Ms. Meuti’s family.

When the weather is as cold as it is, time is of the essence. Nursing homes are legally obligated to provide their residents with adequate supervision to prevent accidents. They are legally obligated to provide their residents with a safe environment. When a nurse or a nurse’s aid discovers that a residents is not where she is supposed to be, the nursing home must immediately locate her. The resident might have eloped out of the facility, and if the weather is as cold as it is, she is in grave danger. The resident might be somewhere she is not supposed to be.

Elopement leads to questions, including:
- Can an Ohio nursing home be held liable for injuries that occur when a resident goes missing?
- Who is ultimately responsible for a resident's elopement?
- How can I make sure that my loved one does not elope from an Ohio nursing home?
- Is the nursing home responsible for elopement – or is it the individual staff who was working?
- How will I (or will I) know if my loved one has eloped?
- Do I need to contact an attorney if my family member eloped from a nursing home?
- How can an attorney help me with an elopement claim?

We have been involved with cases where residents ingested cleaning supplies because they got into a cleaning cabinet or they got into the kitchen. We have been involved in cases where residents eloped and suffered horrible injury, if not death, because of the weather. We have been involved in cases where residents left the facility and fell outside of the facility and suffered a fracture. We have been involved in cases where residents left the facility and drowned in a nearby pond or pool. We have been involved in cases where residents eloped from the facility and wandered into traffic.

Ms. Meuti's family said that there was an exit door near her room that was left unlocked and had no keypad or alarm. This is inexcusable. We recently handled a case where a resident repeatedly eloped out of the facility. When we filed suit and began taking depositions, we discovered that none of the doors were locked. This resident was in a room at the end of the hall, far away from the nurse’s station, right next to a door leading to the outside and that door was always unlocked. Further, this resident eloped multiple times and the nursing home did nothing to prevent future elopements. Finally, the resident left the nursing home late at night in the freezing cold. He was found blocks away from the nursing home. He had fallen and broken his leg. He was wearing a t shirt and pajama bottoms and he was freezing cold. He died as a result.

There is no excuse for this. If there are residents in a nursing home who cannot leave the facility safely, unattended, then the doors must be locked. There are many ways to accomplish this. There can be a release lever that is placed high where a demented or confused resident would not think to look for it.

You can put a keypad on a door. You can even write the code for the keypad on the wall. If the resident is not safe to walk outside by themselves, they are probably not able to enter the key into the keypad.

Tragically, Alvera Meuti was found the next morning, December 24, 2024, Christmas Eve, on the patio outside of the facility, near the area where she exited and near a door that locked behind her. She literally froze to death. Had they gone to look for her immediately, they likely would have found her immediately outside the facility and brought her in and she would not have died.

Amber Henderson claims that she thought that Alvera Meuti left with her family. That is not sufficient. The nursing home must verify where each resident is. Tragically, Amber Henderson apparently falsified her charting and indicating that she had done certain tasks that she was required to do with respect to Alvera Meuti even though Alvera Meuti was not in the nursing home. She lied and said that she completed those tasks when she obviously did not because Ms. Meuti was not in the facility.

False charting is another huge problem that we face in many of our cases. Nursing homes are required to have a sufficient number of adequately trained staff who are qualified to care for their residents. In this case, they clearly, did not and tragedy occurred.

If someone you love is in a nursing home and they cannot leave the nursing home safely on their own, then you must find out what the nursing home's plan is for keeping them safe. You should ask how the doors are secured. You should ask about all the facilities in the area of the nursing home where your loved one is going to reside.

Are the doors locked? Will they use a wanderguard with your loved one, which will alert them if your loved one leaves the unit where they are supposed to be? How will they monitor your loved one? How will they keep him or her safe? This case is a tragic example of what happens when a nursing home does not follow the laws, does not provide their residents with adequate supervision, and does not provide them with a safe environment.

My Mom Had a Fall in Her Nursing Home and I Don't Know What To Do.

During the Holidays we get lots of calls from people with concerns about the care that their loved one is receiving in a nursing home. Many people travel for Thanksgiving and Christmas. This gives them the opportunity to see loved ones including their loved ones who are residents of a nursing home. Often, when people visit their loved ones in a nursing home, particular if they have not seen them in a while, they are concerned about their care and they call us with these concerns.

In this blog, we are going to talk about falls. Many, many nursing home residents suffer falls in their nursing home. When the family inquires about the fall, the staff at the nursing home often gives them a great deal of misinformation.

One of the things that nursing homes often tell families is that they are not permitted to use alarms because alarms are restraints. This is simply not true. If someone you love is in a nursing home and this is what the nursing home is telling you we strongly recommend that you move that person to a different nursing home.

If someone you love has been neglected or abused in a nursing home, please call us at The Dickson Firm at 1800 OHIO LAW. We would be happy to talk with you and help you in any way that we can.

It is true that nursing homes are not permitted to restrain their residents. The reason for this is that restraints more often than not create more problems than they solve. For example, if you have a resident who has the tendency to get up out of bed, it is not helpful nor particularly safe to put their bed rails up. When you put their bed rails up, they often just climb over the bed rail. If they climb over the bed rail, then they simply fall from a higher height. Further, we see residents who get tangled up in a bed rail and tragically sometimes strangle. Therefore, bed rails often do not make nursing home residents safe.

Likewise, if a resident is restrained with straps or some other device, they can likewise get tangled up and strangle. Sometimes these interventions are used in the hospital, However, most people are in the hospital for a short time. If someone is particularly agitated and particularly vulnerable because they just had surgery, then it might make sense for the hospital to restrain them. But in a nursing home setting where most people are there for a longer period of time, restraints are usually not helpful.

However, alarms are not restraints. The nursing homes often argue that the alarm startles the resident and makes them sit back down. This does not make the alarm a restraint. Further, this is a good thing. If someone you love is in a nursing home and they are not allowed to walk around by themselves, then the nursing home has to take precautions so they do not walk around by themselves. If they are at risk for falling when they walk by themselves, then walking by themselves is literally potentially fatal. Falls for an elderly resident often result in fractures and head injuries, both of which can absolutely be fatal. As a result, it is imperative to prevent nursing home residents, who are not able to walk around on their own safely, from walking around unattended.

Nursing homes are legally obligated to provide their residents with adequate supervision
to prevent accidents.

Nursing homes in Ohio are legally required to provide their residents with a safe
environment. This includes preventing falls.

If someone you love is in a nursing home, and they are at risk for falls, and it is not safe for them to walk around unattended, then the nursing home must have a specific care plan that is designed to prevent falls. If your loved one is at risk for falling out of bed, rather than put their bed rails up, the nursing home should put their bed in the lowest position and put a mat by the bed. That way if they happen to roll out of bed, they will not suffer an injury.

Further, there are a quantity of devices that can help the nursing home provide the resident with adequate supervision. I was reviewing a case the other day where the nursing home continued to clip the call light to the resident's clothing. The problem is that throughout the 6,000-page nursing home chart there was not a single instance where the resident ever used their call light over a period of years. The resident was demented. The resident was confused. The resident clearly did not have the ability to use their call light to call for help. She continually got out of bed. She clearly got up and walked on her own, despite the fact that it was not safe for her to get up and walk on her own. This resident suffered multiple falls and ultimately suffered a head injury that caused her death. If your resident suffers a fall in the nursing home, the nursing home needs to tell you what their plan is to prevent falls in the future.

There are alarms that are connected to a pressure pad that goes under the resident either sitting in a chair or laying in bed. That way when the resident begins to get up they take the pressure off the pad an alarm sounds which alerts the staff. There are clip alarms where the clip is attached to the resident's clothing and then attached to a string that goes to a magnet. If the resident starts to get up and pulls the magnet off the base the alarm sounds. There are motion detectors so that if the resident starts to get up in their room the staff
can be alerted.

Nursing Homes claim that alarms startle the resident and are therefore restraints. Many alarms do not startle the residents. Even if they do that does not make them restraints. Alarms can be connected to a pager that the nurses wear on their belt. They can be connected to a light that lights up over the resident's room. They can be connected to a voice recording. There are alarms where the resident's family member can record their voice encouraging the resident to sit back down.

One thing to ask the nursing home if they claim that they do not use alarms because they are restraints is, have they tried an alarm with your loved one? How do they know that the alarm will startle your loved one? It may not. There is absolutely no evidence that all alarms startle all nursing home residents. Many nursing homes have eliminated alarms simply because the use of alarms helps lawyers like me document their substandard care. If they are supposed to use an alarm and they do not use that alarm and a person has a fall they are clearly responsible. If they are using an alarm and the alarm goes off and nobody responds promptly then they are also responsible.

Alarms by themselves do not prevent falls. Alarms alert the staff that a resident who cannot walk safely on their own is starting to get up. What needs to happen is that the staff needs to respond to the resident immediately when they hear the alarm. They need to treat alarms as a matter of life and death because if a resident suffers a fall it is very likely that they can suffer a fatal injury. The owners and the operators of the nursing home need to make sure there are enough qualified staff to provide proper care to the residents including responding to fall alarms. The Nursing Home is required to provide all residents with adequate supervision to prevent accidents.

If someone you love is in a nursing home, and it is not safe for them to walk unattended, you must talk with the Director of Nursing or the Administrator and find out from them what the plan is to keep your loved one safe. If they do not have such a plan, if they cannot explain that plan, you should think seriously about moving your loved one to a safer nursing home. Many families express to us that it is challenging to move their loved one. The key is to find the better nursing home and then to work with that nursing home to move your loved one. The new nursing home will be motivated to help you move your loved one to their nursing home.

You can go to www.Medicare.gov and find a better nursing home in your area and then make arrangements to move your loved one.

Ohio Nursing Home Falls Often Result in Life Changing Consequences for Seniors

Every 11 seconds, an older person in the United States is treated in an emergency room for fall-related injuries.

When an adult falls, it often results in life changing consequences. Falls can lead to extending nursing home stays, permanent disability and even death.

The good news is that many falls can be prevented. The risk factor that is most likely to predict a future fall is a previous fall.

Falls can be caused by any number of things. Falls can be caused by vision problems. Falls can be caused by tripping on objects. Falls can be caused by weakness. Falls can be caused when an elderly person is knocked down by somebody else.

At The Dickson Firm, falls are one of the most common types of cases that handled by our Elder Law Attorneys. Our injury lawyers have handled hundreds of cases involving falls in nursing homes throughout the State of Ohio.

Nursing homes in Ohio have a duty, pursuant to the Ohio Nursing Home Residents Bill of Rights, which is a state law in Ohio, to provide their residents with a safe environment. This includes an environment where they address the needs of their residents who are at risk for falling. Many nursing home residents are at risk for falling.

When a resident is admitted to a nursing home, the nursing home is obligated to perform a comprehensive assessment of that resident to determine all of their needs. One of the things that they have to determine is if that person is at risk for falls. Some nursing home residents can walk safely on their own. They can get up and go to the bathroom on their own. They can walk to the dining room and have a meal on their own. They may need to be kept in the nursing home so they don't wander outside of the nursing home and get injured because they have dementia or some other challenge. But they are able to move about safely. Other nursing home residents are not able to get up on their own. They need assistance to get out of bed. However, there are a number of residents in the middle, who are strong enough to get up on their own, but not strong enough to walk safely on their own. They need supervision, and they need assistance.

As Ohio Nursing Home Lawyers we need to be familiar with the many state and federal laws and regulations that apply to the care of nursing home residents in a nursing home. Pursuant to the Code of Federal Regulations, which is a set of federal regulations that apply to all nursing homes in the United States, nursing homes are obligated to provide their residents with adequate supervision to prevent accidents. Nursing homes are also obligated to keep the resident environment as free of action hazards as is possible.

So, how do nursing homes provide their residents with adequate supervision?

Many residents use alarms. There are pressure pads that can go beneath a resident's chair or their bed so if the resident begins to get up, it sounds an alarm, and the staff can then attend to the resident and make sure that they are not getting up unattended. There are string alarms whereby a clip is placed on the resident's clothing, and the string goes to a magnet at the base of the alarm. If the resident begins to get up and pulls the magnet off its base, an alarm sounds, and the staff at the nursing home can attend to the resident. Nursing homes can make use of cameras in the rooms. They can make use of motion detectors.

Some nursing homes tell families who are admitting a loved one into their nursing home that fall alarms are restraints. This is completely untrue. While there may be some residents who might be startled by the sound of an alarm, alarms are not restraints. Further, there are many alarms that don't make an audible sound. There are alarms that set off a pager that a nurse can wear on her person. There are alarms that illuminate a light over the door of the resident's room. There are even alarms that could be programmed with the voice of one of the resident's loved ones telling that resident to sit down and call for help. There are many ways to implement alarms effectively without disturbing the residents.

At The Dickson Firm, it is our belief that many nursing homes have stopped using alarms because the use of alarms makes it easier to prove a nursing home case when somebody has fallen and suffered injury. If the resident was supposed to have an alarm and they did not have an alarm in place when they fall, then the nursing home would be liable for that fall. If the alarm does go off and the staff does not respond promptly, that can also be used against the nursing home in a lawsuit.

The fact remains that nursing homes are obligated to provide their residents with adequate supervision to prevent accidents. If you are admitting someone who you love into a nursing home and they are at risk for falls, you need to have a detailed discussion with the staff at the nursing home about what their plan is to keep your loved one safe.

What is their plan to give them adequate supervision? If they don't use alarms, how do they provide their residents with adequate supervision. We here at The Dickson Firm have never been provided with a reasonable response to that question.

We have never seen a strategy where a nursing home is actually able to provide adequate supervision to their residents without the use of alarms. Imagine a nursing home at 3:00 in the morning. There are 30 residents on one wing. There is one nurse and two aides on duty on that wing. How could those three people possibly know whether any of their 30 residents are up walking around their room? Imagine two of the aids are in one resident's room transferring that person to their wheelchair and ultimately to the commode using a Hoyer lift so that person can be toileted. Imagine the nurse is tending to a second resident. That leaves 28 residents unattended. It is simply not possible for the staff at a nursing home to have eyes on every single resident 24 hours a day. They need to come up with a system for adequate supervision. This system routinely involves some technology that enables the staff to keep an eye on the residents.

If your loved one is at risk for falls and the nursing home does not have an adequate strategy to prevent falls, do not leave your loved one in that nursing home. At The Dickson Firm our experienced nursing home lawyers have handled many cases where a person has suffered a fatal fall within hours of being admitted to the nursing home. We have handled many cases where the family member has told us that they specifically told the staff that their loved one was a fall risk and yet the nursing home did not put any interventions in place and the resident fell and suffered a serious injury.

In many cases, the resident is a new resident in the nursing home because they have suffered a fall. We see many cases where somebody suffers a fall at home, suffers an injury, goes to the hospital for treatment, often surgery, and then is sent to the nursing home for rehabilitation. As indicated above, the best indicator that somebody is a fall risk is if they have had a prior fall. The nursing home is obligated to provide each of their residents with an adequate strategy to prevent falls. If your loved one is at risk for falling out of bed, their bed should be placed in the lowest position. They can even place the mattress directly on the floor. And there should be a mat next to the bed.

Falls can be extremely harmful for elderly people. Falls can lead to fractures which can lead to immobility. Immobility can lead to pneumonia. Immobility can lead to bed sores. Falls themselves can be fatal. We have handled many, many cases where nursing home residents have fallen and either suffered a head injury which is ultimately fatal or even an orthopedic injury which is ultimately fatal. An incredibly high number of elderly people who suffer falls do not survive a year after that fall. As a result, fall prevention has to be a significant priority for any nursing home that cares about providing good care.

If someone you love has suffered an injury 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.