When the Covid-19 pandemic arrived in the United States, one of the first places it lodged itself into was at the Life Care Center nursing home in Kirkland, Washington. As horrific as this became for residents and the desperate family members who cared for them, it was an unfortunately foreseeable event. Viruses like Covid-19 thrive where people live in close quarters, and the elderly are always a high-risk population for diseases like those caused by Coronaviruses.
Did Your Loved One Get The Care The Law Requires In The Pandemic?
While pandemics, especially on the scale of Covid-19, are a rare occurrence, nursing homes nationwide operate under a series of federal regulatory requirements in exchange for funding from Medicare and Medicaid.
These rules are known in the industry as F-tags, and if a nursing home ends up not being in compliance with those federal rules, they may be liable in court for any harm they cause residents and family members. These F-tags include regulations governing nursing home operations during times of highly communicable diseases like Covid-19.
Note that on March 9, 2020, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) issued additional guidance regarding the Coronavirus / Covid-19 pandemic, with specific restrictions on visitors to long term care facilities like nursing homes as a way of stopping the spread. This is only part of the nursing home’s responsibility, however.
Once a virus like the 2019 Novel Coronavirus has established itself in a facility and residents are becoming sick and even dying, a nursing home will rightly face scrutiny over whether its practices amounted to negligence.
Often, family members will demand that their sick loved one be hospitalized, but the home is understaffed and appropriate personnel are not available to respond in a timely manner. In other cases, staff who are not qualified to perform critical assessments may be tasked with doing so; their findings may be inadequate or even incorrect, but can still inform how the home handles next steps for the patient.
Nursing homes are also required to identify and isolate sick residents, even when an outbreak is less severe than the Covid-19 / Coronavirus pandemic. Failure to properly manage care for sick and well residents can allow the disease to spread more easily, which puts both residents and staff at risk.
As one example, at the Life Care Center in Washington, the facility’s staff doctor became sick with Covid-19 and there was no backup clinician on staff. The home was also severely lacking in personal protective equipment (PPE), meaning that staff and sick residents didn’t have access to masks and gloves that might have slowed the spread, and well residents didn’t have access to basics like hand sanitizer.
These shortcomings can be catastrophic, especially for older and sicker patients whose condition can deteriorate very, very quickly. When this is how your loved one ended up dying in a nursing home, the home almost certainly has liability for negligence and wrongful death.
We Hold Nursing Homes Accountable For Covid-19 Deaths In Louisiana
At the Gertler Law Firm, we take your loved ones’ safety in a nursing home very seriously, and when nursing homes fail to deliver a medically sound environment to protect their residents, we take action.
If your loved one in long term care, assisted living, or a nursing home died of Covid-19 infection in New Orleans, Louisiana, call us today at (504) 581-6411, for a free consultation with an experienced New Orleans nursing home negligence and wrongful death attorney.