In order to bring a claim, you have to show that there was negligence on the part of the facility — that is, that the care they provided was below the standard of care for facilities of their type. If it’s a nursing home, perhaps it was failing to properly care for the skin and allow in the development of bed sores, or maybe it was allowing the residents to continue to fall without intervention. In an assisted living facility, perhaps it was having someone who no longer could be adequately and properly cared for in the assisted living situation who suffered harm because they needed more care (like a nursing home).
Once you’ve established that the facility did something wrong, you also have to show the harm. That is, you must demonstrate what happened to the resident as a result of the negligence. Did the elderly resident get a bed sore, did they have to have surgery due to a fall, did they die?
Older people who are in a long term care facilities frequently have a number of different medical conditions. After all, that’s why they are there. So are those conditions being
properly managed or did the neglect by that facility cause additional harm to them such that they died prematurely.
