What About the Quality of Staff?
Texas Nursing Home Abuse
Due to budgetary concerns, nursing homes are faced with the basic difficulty of hiring and retaining an adequate staff. A particular problem is with those employees involved in direct patient care. The work is not glamorous and the pay is not competitive. Therefore, Texas nursing homes do not attract many highly skilled nurses away from the higher paying hospital positions. As a result, the facilities are often forced to hire minimum wage employees to care for their most important asset—their elderly residents.
Virtually all of the care is provided by nurses’ aides who are not adequately trained, who are underpaid, and who receive few, if any, job benefits. These lower paid nurses’ aides are plagued with frequent absenteeism and high turnover, as well as lack of education, training, and skills.
It is essential that nursing home facilities have adequate staff to care for their patients. As a result, the nursing homes are often forced to quickly hire positions without performing necessary background checks. In fact, it is not uncommon to find that a large percentage of the nurses’ aides have criminal convictions. Texas law allows all nursing facilities to obtain criminal background checks on their employees. Failure to investigate this history and consequently employing a criminal results in clear violation of Texas law.
The law also requires that each patient have a medical doctor (MD) or doctor of osteopathic medicine (DO) who is his or her attending physician. These doctors are in short supply for many of the same reasons the certified nurses are in short supply. The job is not glamorous, and they can find higher paying jobs in other medical areas of expertise. The Medicaid reimbursement plan assures each doctor that he or she will get paid for his or her services. However, this system pays such a low fee that unless the doctor has a substantial group of residents in a nursing home, the doctor will actually lose money by making the visits to the nursing facility residents. Therefore, residents are denied the personal attention they may desperately need. Due to the residents’ fragile conditions, inattentive medical care can result in dire consequences.
» Contact Daniel Stark nursing home abuse lawyers today for a free consultation or call us toll free at (866) 241-4861.
What's My Case Worth?
Helpful Nursing Home Abuse Resources
LEARN MORE ABOUT YOUR RIGHTS:
- Why does nursing home neglect occur?
- How are most nursing homes paid?
- What about the quality of staff?
- What are the basic problems with the nursing care system?
- What are some recent cases?
- What can litigation do for the nursing care system?
- How does Daniel Stark evaluate and investigate your claim?
» Free Consultation
If you feel that you may have a legal claim, contact a Texas nursing home abuse lawyer from Daniel Stark Personal Injury Lawyers for a free and confidential consultation. Simply complete a free consultation request form or call us toll free at (866) 241-4861. We have offices in Bryan* and Waco.
Daniel Stark practices in the following areas: auto accidents, trucking accidents, wrongful death, construction accidents, drug injuries, defective products, dog bite, electrocutions & burn Injuries, medical malpractice, and nursing home abuse.
* Main office located in Bryan, Texas
** No attorney's fees unless you recover. Court costs, litigation expenses, and unpaid medical expenses are paid from client's share of the recovery. However, if there is no recovery, client will not be responsible for any court costs or litigation expenses, except client's unpaid medical bills.
