Keating Law Offices Retained to Represent Family of Deceased Nursing Home Resident

The daughter of a former resident of a nursing home in Chicago's south suburbs has retained the law firm of Keating Law Offices to investigate her mother’s death. Her mother suffered a Stage IV sacral pressure ulcer resulting in a severe infection and death.

The Chicago Nursing Home Attorneys at Keating Law Offices are very familiar with the particular nursing home. “Our firm has successfully resolved several cases against this nursing home involving allegations of failure to prevent bed sores in recent years,” said Attorney Mike Keating.
 
All nursing home have a duty to implement interventions (actions for nursing staff to take) necessary to prevent pressure ulcers from developing and provide safe living conditions for each of its residents. Pressure sores are preventable. Proper nursing care can ensure residents do not sustain pressure ulcers. All too often, nursing staff fails to turn and reposition residents, provide proper mattresses, or provide nutrition necessary to prevent skin breakdown.

The failure to prevent and treat a pressure sore may result in fatal infection. In this case, the resident developed sepsis which ultimately lead to renal failure and death as a direct result of her large open pressure sore.

If your loved suffered a bed sore, injury, or death at a nursing home in Chicago, the suburbs, or elsewhere in Illinois please contact an experienced Chicago nursing home neglect attorney to evaluate your case.

If you have a question about this post, or any other issue related to Illinois personal injury law, please contact Illinois Nursing Home Abuse and Neglect Attorneys at Keating Law Offices. You can contact Mike Keating directly by calling 312-208-7702 or emailing MKeating@KeatingLegal.com, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. All phone calls and emails are returned promptly. All initial consultations are free and confidential.

KLO Settles Case on Behalf of Estate of Nursing Home Resident

Keating Law Offices has successfully resolved a lawsuit filed on behalf of a Chicago family whose mother died of sepsis. The lawsuit alleged that the sepsis was contracted in the nursing home. The resident was admitted to a South Side nursing home for treatment of cellulitis in her left leg. The plan on admission was for the resident to receive care for approximately two weeks and then be released from the facility. At the time the resident was a 50-year old lady who worked in the health care field and by all accounts was relatively active.

The nursing home abuse and neglect attorneys at Keating Law Offices were able to demonstrate that the resident most likely did not receive the nursing care she required from the nursing home and her condition rapidly declined. By the time the resident was discharged from the facility six weeks after her admission the cellulitis had worsened and pressure ulcers had developed in other areas of her body as her condition declined. Most significantly, she contracted multiple resistant organisms which led to the sepsis that caused her death.

Keating Law Offices, P.C., representing the estate of the nursing home resident, alleged that the nursing staff at the nursing home had the primary responsibilities of basic wound care, monitoring the resident's condition, and communicating with her physicians. It was further alleged that it was the violation of the duty to meet these responsibilities that led to the resident's original leg wounds worsening and for her to develop additional pressure ulcers.

The parties reached a financial settlement at a mediation prior to the matter being set for trial. At the beginning of litigation the attorneys for the nursing home were insistent that the nursing home did absolutely nothing wrong and the death of the resident was just an unfortunate outcome. In the course of litigation it became clear that the case was much more complicated and the nursing home may have played a large part in the death of the resident.

If you have any questions regarding this post or an issue involving Nursing Home Abuse and Neglect, please contact Illinois Nursing Home Attorney Mike Keating at 312-208-7702 or MKeating@KeatingLegal.com. All initial consultations are confidential and free.

Illinois Legislators Pass Bills to Fight Infections in Nursing Homes

Illinois' state capital of Springfield is always busy this time of the year as the spring legislative sessions comes to a close. If a legislator's bill has a chance of becoming a law it is often "now or never." Fortunately, Illinois legislators have passed to bills that are a part of efforts to make nursing homes and other long-term care facilities accountable for infections. 

House Bill 1096 amends the Illinois Nursing Home Care Act. The bill provides that a skilled nursing facility must designate an employee as an "Infection Prevention and Control Professional" to develop and implement policies governing control of infections and communicable diseases. The bill also provides that the Infection Prevention and Control Professional's qualifications shall be documented and made available for inspection by the Department of Public Health to ensure that an appropriate person is, in fact, doing this job in the nursing home. If this bill is signed by Gov. Quinn it would become effective on January 1, 2012.

House Bill 1658 amends the Vital Records Act to require the doctor completing the medical certification of cause of death for a death certificate must note the presence of the cause of common infections found in nursing homes on the death certificate. These bacteria include methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), clostridium difficile, or vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE) if it is a contributing factor to or the cause of death. The bill also provides that additional multi-drug resistant organisms (MDROs) may be added to the list by the Illinois Department of Public Health. 

Currently, many doctors often put the primary cause of death on the death certificate. A common example of this is when a doctor lists sepsis as the cause of death but does not list the cause of the sepsis. Sepsis occurs when bacteria enters the body and spreads into the bloodstream. Infections from bacteria typically start out on the skin of a nursing home resident before entering the bloodstream through an open wound on the skin. Sepsis requires immediate treatment with progressive antibiotic treatment in a hospital setting. House Bill 1658 would make sure that the secondary or contributing cause, in the case of sepsis the bacteria or "bug" that caused the sepsis, is also put on the death certificate. This way the cause of sepsis could be tracked. 

The nursing home abuse and neglect attorneys at Keating Law Offices have experience handling cases stemming from infections contracted in a nursing home or other long-term care setting. If you have any questions regarding this post or an issue involving Nursing Home Abuse and Neglect, please contact Illinois Nursing Home Attorney Mike Keating at 312-208-7702 or MKeating@KeatingLegal.com. All initial consultations are confidential and free.

The Threat of Sepsis and a Missed Diagnosis

The Los Angeles Times has printed a news story about a study into the lasting impact of sepsis in elderly individuals. The study was originally published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). Sepsis is a very serious medical condition in which a person's bloodstream is overwhelmed with an infection. If sepsis is not diagnosed quickly, the affected person can experience organ failure and die. Sepsis can only be treated if it is diagnosed quickly and appropriately. 

The researchers compared a large sample of elderly patients who suffered from sepsis against an even larger sample of elderly patients who were hospitalized and did not have sepsis. The researchers found that those elderly patients who suffered from sepsis and survived were much more likely to develop problems with thinking and memory. Those patients who suffered from sepsis were also more likely to develop a physical limitation with their activities of daily living like walking, dressing, or bathing.

The nursing staff in a nursing home is responsible for monitoring the patient to check for any "significant changes" in a resident's condition. Symptoms of sepsis are often confused with symptoms of the flu or just general lethargy. It is the nursing staff's responsibility, however, to contact the resident's physician if it appears the resident is ill. Often what happens is a resident has contracted sepsis and the nursing staff does not act quickly. This delay denies the sick resident the opportunity to get immediate medical treatment. As mentioned above, sepsis needs to be treated immediately. If sepsis isn't treated immediately the illness leads to severe and lasting injury or death.

Another way in which sepsis is at the heart of litigation is from infected bedsores. Often what happens is the nursing staff does not monitor residents who are at risk for developing bedsores. The bedsores develop and then are a "target" for deadly bacteria. The deadly bacteria enters the body through the bedsore and the bacteria leads to sepsis. This dangerous chain of events can be stopped if proper measures are taken so that bedsores do not develop.

Attorney Mike Keating has handled several cases involving residents who unnecessarily contracted sepsis while a resident at a nursing home. If you have any questions regarding this post or an issue involving Nursing Home Abuse and Neglect, please contact Illinois Nursing Home Attorney Mike Keating at 312-208-7702 or MKeating@KeatingLegal.com. All initial consultations are confidential and free.