014 Nursing Home Abuse and Neglect Lawyers Discuss

VERONICA: Open the door and come on into the house. This is Lawyers in the House with Montlick on WSB. I’m your huggable host Veronica Waters, coming to you from the studios of Atlanta, GA.

DOUGLAS: Look at me – shaking my head. That’s great radio.

VERONICA: Her relatives come to see her and they discover… the G-rated version of this is that they discover she has become sort of a sex symbol with the senior gentleman there.

DOUGLAS: Oh, yeah.

VERONICA: Yeah. And so it’s so funny. And it occurred to me today because we were talking about… we’re going to be talking about nursing homes today, and unfortunately, the stuff that you guys have to deal with is not nearly as funny as 91-year-old Kate and her penicillin shots.

VERONICA: So a lot of us have loved ones in nursing homes, and families put our elders and sometimes younger people in long term care facilities, the skilled nursing facilities, because we believe it to be a safe place where they can be taken care of around the clock. But what happens when it’s not always the safest? That’s what we’re talking about today on Lawyers in the House with Montlick.

DOUGLAS: I did.

VERONICA: A long time football player, came to us by way of Pennsylvania, earned his degrees at Syracuse and Duquesne.

DOUGLAS: Yes, exactly. Yes.

VERONICA: Okay. Although, interestingly enough, you came to the law with a business degree, which I find fascinating.

DOUGLAS: I did. So I was in just management school, like so many kids are in undergrad, and you’re thinking, look, I want to get into business, but what is business?

VERONICA: Here you are. You’ve been at Montlick since 2015. You find yourself on the radio with me today.

DOUGLAS: Yes, I was going to say made some better decisions. Now I’m here.

VERONICA: Clearly, what’s going on there? And Doug known as a really compassionate and empathetic attorney who puts himself in his clients’ shoes.

DOUGLAS: I try. I really do, because it’s tough, real world stuff. So I’m happy to be able to try to help a little bit here today.

LYNN: Washington with an R.

VERONICA: I love that. And, Lynn, you are one of two nurses turned attorneys at Montlick, which I think is so incredibly cool. Lynn nursed for a quarter of a century before she decided that she was not going to think about retirement per se, but think about starting up a brand new career in the law.

LYNN: Yes.

VERONICA:  Which we know, means what? Lynn settled a really big case.

LYNN: Several really big cases.

VERONICA: I love that. And little-known fact about these guys. So Doug beat me to beat me to the podcast game.

VERONICA: With his sports talk show pre-pandemic. And Lynn used to hang up her scrubs and put on stilettos to do competitive ballroom dancing.

LYNN: Yes.

VERONICA: How good was that?

LYNN: It was pretty good. It was very aerobic and very mentally challenging. And it was really fun. Really fun. Apparently, Doug did it, too,

VERONICA: which I was going to say. It’s so cool to find out that Doug did it, too.

LYNN: That was a surprise.

DOUGLAS: I was definitely forced to do it.

VERONICA: Maybe we can get you guys to do a little tango for the video before the show is open.

DOUGLAS: I guess we have to do something for the social, maybe.

VERONICA: Yeah. Talk amongst yourselves. We’re going to work that out. All right. Seriously, though, abuse and neglect at nursing homes is what we’re talking about today. And I love that I have such a great vibe with you because it is such a serious topic.

LYNN: No, they are two different things.

VERONICA: That’s a lot to unpack, and I wonder if it’s as prevalent as I fear that it is. I say that because I’ve covered in my career several cases of nursing home abuse and neglect. And I think although we’re talking about how this can happen in facilities, I’ve seen some cases where it happened at home when a relative was supposed to be taking care of it. So what jumps out at you, Doug?

DOUGLAS: Sure. So whenever you’re talking about nursing homes, the thing that I thought was so interesting about this topic is unlike some of the other fields of law that we work in, such as auto accident cases or anything, you can’t really do anything about somebody rear-ending you, but you can do something ahead of time to help protect your loved ones from being in a bad situation. And that’s kind of what we hope to impart here.

VERONICA: Let’s talk about what it looks like on the ground in real time.

DOUGLAS: Sure.

LYNN: Yes, very. Yes.

DOUGLAS: Right.

VERONICA: Lynn, you spend a lot of time on the ground dealing with patients. I’m glad you mentioned that. What are some of these big challenges? In some ways, it might feel like a thankless job. Am I wrong?

LYNN: Working in a nursing home?

VERONICA: Oh, really?

LYNN: Yeah. Okay. That’s considered a restraint. So there is a restraint.

VERONICA: I was thinking like straps.

LYNN: Well, you can’t tie them down in bed if they’re going to fall out of bed.

VERONICA: Sedation.

LYNN: Chemical sedation? Yes. No.

VERONICA: Sort of delicate.

VERONICA That is so shocking and so scary.

LYNN: Bed sores are one of the most… I would say the most common, along with falls.

VERONICA: Bed sores and falls? Okay.

LYNN: I would say.

VERONICA: What do you say, Doug? What do you see?

DOUGLAS: I would say it’s a lot of the bed sore stuff. It’s a lot of falls.

VERONICA: And that continues today.

DOUGLAS: Right. So, like what Lynn was saying, it is on us as family members of our loved ones to also take an active role in their care.

VERONICA: How could something like this happen? And that’s what we need to get into next- warning signs, what to look for, how and when to look for them.

VERONICA: Welcome back to the house. Lawyers in the House, with me, your host Veronica Waters and Doug Glosser and Lynn Walker, injury attorneys from Montlick, talking about nursing home abuse and neglect.

DOUGLAS: sure.

VERONICA: What are some things that I can look out for, though, when it comes to safeguarding my relative, my loved one from further abuse or neglect? If something’s happening, what do I look for?

LYNN: Well, first of all, I have to say the nursing home should have contacted someone because something obviously happened. They may have gone to the hospital, so someone should have known what happened. If they fell, if they were dropped. Being dropped is also another… dead weight a lot of times.

DOUGLAS: Meet everybody around there. I mean, it can be as simple as even just smelling what the facility smells like. Is it clean?

VERONICA: All right, so give me like a couple of points of what… if you could rattle off three or four or five things that I need to think about, need to look out for it in a visit.

DOUGLAS: Sure.

VERONICA: Smells is one thing.

DOUGLAS: Smells is one thing. Take a look to see if the food that your relative has is new. Is the milk that they’re being served, is it new? Is it expired? Take a look. Like you said, your uncle looked great physically. That’s one thing to look for. Have they been bathed? Another thing if you’re in the area, is look to see how your loved one interacts with the staff that..

VERONICA: Are they socially isolated?

DOUGLAS: Exactly. Particularly if you have a loved one that’s not communicative all the time.

VERONICA: huge red flag. More to come, including the kinds of cases that could be difficult to handle. This is lawyers in the house with Montlick on WSB. You’re listening to our podcast, lawyers in the house with mott lake. Join us 08:00 a.m. Every Sunday on 95.5 WSB. Welcome back to lawyers in the house with mott Lake on WSB.

DOUGLAS: Hit us in the DMs. Always happy to answer whatever you need. It’s free there, too.

VERONICA: Yeah, Lynn talked about that earlier. There doesn’t have to be any malicious intent. People are just understaffed, they’re overworked, and they’re doing their best in what can be a hard situation with sometimes hard to handle patients.

DOUGLAS: And there’s so many of those situations that we never would hear about.

VERONICA: Who taped it? The aide. And she ended up telling the daughter. Now the place was cited because they didn’t report it to police right away, but she did tell the daughter when she came. To your point, having a relationship with those folks who work with your loved one can help.

LYNN: It’s also very important. We might have touched on this somewhat.

VERONICA: And you said anytime of day or night, right?

LYNN: Pretty much. I think it’s a very good idea to visit on the night shift, visit in the evening shift, the different shifts, because the staffing is different. You want to get to know all the staff and you want to see what goes on during those time periods. And if you can share a meal with them, because a lot of times it’s hard for them to feed themselves.

LYNN: And act different. And like Doug had mentioned earlier, withdrawing, becoming silent when a particular staff member comes around. I mean, you know your loved one and you know them like a mother knows their infant and you know when something’s wrong and it might not be that they can verbalize it, but you know them.

DOUGLAS: towards that end, it’s really important. Like when we as attorneys are taking these calls from people that have been involved in situations or something has happened, the one thing that I always want to impress upon people is that even if something really horrible happens, it doesn’t always mean that we can always run with the case.

VERONICA: Thank you.

DOUGLAS: Yes, exactly. So you always got to plug the stuff. But in those situations, just like in nursing home cases, the burden is on us as the plaintiff to show exactly what happened and what went wrong.

VERONICA: Some of these cases can really be hard to prove.

VERONICA: Alright, so one of the stories that I covered, one of the incidents that I covered and talked about in stories was a man who had pleaded for help repeatedly as he lay unable to breathe in his nursing home.

DOUGLAS: Sure.

VERONICA: Right. Is that legal? Can I do that?

LYNN: Well, advise the family if their loved one, the resident, is in a room by themselves, then yes, you could do that. But there’s HIPAA laws and everybody’s entitled to their privacy and their medical privacy.

VERONIA: What if I can angle the camera so that the other half of the room?

LYNN: Probably. But it would depend upon every state has different laws too, about things like that. So you would have to look into that depending on what state they’re in. But you cannot be recording other residents.

VERONICA: Yeah, it’s different from recording like Georgia is a one-party state when it comes to recording. Correct? Yes, it’s totally different. I see what you’re saying.

DOUGLAS: All of this to say there’s nothing better than just being there and being involved. And that’s ultimately, I think, what’s going to, number one, help us help families. But number two, and even better, maybe just prevent this situation from even occurring in the first place.

VERONICA: There is somebody…

VERONICA: I’m your host, Veronica Waters, here with Montlick injury attorneys Doug Glosser and Lynn Walker, talking about nursing home abuse and neglect. You’ve been waiting for this all hour long. So without further ado, the Montlick closing argument.

VERONICA: Ombudsman. O-M-B-D-U-D-S-M-A-N. An ombudsman. Sounds like a flower.

DOUGLAS: Yes. Not the most practical name for such an important job. Yeah.

VERONICA: That’s incredible. So something I could sign at the beginning could protect the skilled nursing facility, but not my loved one in the long run.

LYNN: I feel it’s more for their protection. It’s very expensive to go that route, and a lot of times it can be binding arbitration, which means the arbitrator has the final say. LYNN: It’s not that they shouldn’t be a neutral arbitrator, but it just takes away a lot of your personal rights and it’s very expensive and sometimes almost prohibits the ability to just bring a case.

VERONICA: Doug and Lynn, what are some of the cases that seem difficult, if not impossible to handle?

VERONICA: Why should I believe that you care now? Two attorneys who do care Lynn Walker and Doug Glosser. Montlick injury attorneys here on Lawyers in the house with Montlick. Make sure you catch us on all avenues social @Montlicklaw.