Have you been the victim of nursing home negligence? Learn the nitty gritty of your nursing home abuse case, then call our Florida lawyer.
What to Do About Nursing Home Abuse
We have clients who discover that a loved one has been abused in a nursing home facility. They don’t know what to do. They call and they ask what to do. What can they do to stop it? You can do several things, a couple in particular. One is you can file a complaint with the Agency for Healthcare Administration. The agency is the state agency that controls the licensing of facilities and their behavior. They will investigate that complaint. They have a lot of powers that they can implement depending upon what’s happening, including fining the facility and revoking the license, which prevents the facility from operating as a nursing home. There are other tools that they have at their disposal, as well.
You can also make a claim against the facility for that loved one or the loved one can do it directly.
Reporting Nursing Home Negligence
Clients sometimes say they’re not interested in suing the facility but they want to report abuse, either of their loved one or they see it. You can report that to the Florida Agency for Healthcare Administration. They have a nursing home division and they have forms where you can file a complaint with the agency. These complaints are taken seriously. They’re investigated. Each complaint is investigated by the agency and disposed of one way or the other. The agency has disciplinary powers that range from fining the facility to revoking the facility’s license, which is pretty serious because if the license is revoked, they cannot operate that facility in the state of Florida.
After Filing a Nursing Home Abuse Case
Clients who come to us in these matters are very unfamiliar with the nursing home process and the claims process. They know that their loved one has been damaged, hurt, or perhaps killed because of what happened at the nursing home; beyond that, they don’t have any idea what to do. There are two avenues that they can take. The first is to call our firm. We have handled nursing home cases for over 38 years in the Nassau County and Duval County area and can walk you through everything.
Nursing homes are licensed by the Agency for Healthcare Administration. There is a separate division for nursing home oversight. Nursing homes are inspected regularly. There is, most of the time, good and effective oversight. You, as a client, can file a complaint with the Agency for Healthcare Administration. The agency will investigate the case and find out if there’s cause. There are a lot of tools that the agency has to discipline a nursing home, from fining them to revoking their license. Without their license, they cannot have a nursing facility in state of Florida.
The other is filing a complaint in the circuit court state of Florida. Our nursing home negligence attorney practices in northeast Florida in the four judicial circuit primarily, which covers Nassau County and Duval County, and some surrounding counties. We file a complaint after we’ve satisfied some of the hoops we’ve got to jump through. We file a complaint and we sue that nursing home and the management company. Any other entity that we can include, we do. That brings the case to the point of bringing it to trial.
What happens after that is a lot of litigation back and forth. These cases are defended aggressively but we pursue them aggressively, as well, all with an eye toward achieving a fair resolution to your case, either by way of settling the case or trying the case and obtaining a fair verdict to collect against the defendants. That’s what happens when you file a complaint, either administratively with the agency or in the court system, both of which we can help you.
Common Mistakes in a Nursing Home Abuse Case
One mistake we often see in these cases is a client trying to work out things with the facility. Many times, these residents have been at a facility for a long time and relationships have been established. They try to work out a problem. The people at the facility routinely say that the problems associated with the loved one are not due to neglect but instead to uncontrollable end of life issues. Clients, as a result, get lulled into a false sense of security, if you will. They never know that that end has been accelerated due to the actions or inactions of the facility staff. They get lulled into a false sense of security and delays happen. In Florida, you have two years to initiate a claim under the Nursing Home Act. That time can go by quickly. If the call to the lawyer doesn’t get made as soon as possible, that’s a big mistake.
Other mistakes are that clients will get a lawyer that’s not experienced in the area. This is very specialized work. If you’re not practicing in this area of the law on a regular basis, you will miss things. It will be to the detriment of the client.
Nursing Home Negligence Case Value
There are many considerations that go into putting the value on a case. We start with gathering up the records, including the nursing home facility records, hospital records, and medical records of all kinds. That takes a long time. Determining how strong the liability part of the case is, can we prove that the facility neglected the loved one or abused the loved one or did something in a negligent fashion? Can we prove that and how easily can we do that? What are the damages? These are sometimes difficult cases to value in terms of the damages of medical bills, and typically there aren’t any lost wages because we’re dealing with elderly clients.
Value comes toward the end of the case. We generally talk about value range and the considerations that go into it don’t come about until we’re well into the case after we’ve discovered what we can find out what happened and the evidence that we can use to prove our case. All that factors into valuing your case. Eventually, we get to that point and we have that discussion but it’s not early on.
Did you lose a loved one from the negligence of another in Florida and have questions about the nitty gritty of your nursing home abuse case? Contact an experienced Nassau County nursing home abuse lawyer at Paul Boone Law today for a free consultation and case evaluation.
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