Denver Nursing Home Abuse Lawyers

Helping victims get justice and blazing the trail for your recovery.

When elder or disabled care facilities abuse or neglect you or your loved one, Nursing Home Justice will step in to fight for your rights and your medical and monetary recovery

Contact Nursing Home Justice Today

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01: About Nursing Home Justice

Nursing Home Lawyers Relentlessly Pursuing Justice For Abuse Victims

When the unspeakable happens, we’ll protect you

Elder and disabled care facilities should feel like a home where patients are cared for — not like a warehouse where product is stored. A law firm should be a place where your voice is heard and your pain is met with compassion — not an assembly line that puts quantity over quality.

At Nursing Home Justice, you have our full attention. We are located in Denver, and serve the state of Colorado. We have extensive experience in helping injured nursing home victims get justice and won’t back down from corporate goliaths. We also offer valuable insight into the world of nursing home abuse to keep you informed on your recovery journey.

Attorney Mac Hester has over 35 years of experience and ensures you’re made whole again through financial recovery. We know you may be intimidated by the road ahead, but rest assured that we’ll guide you through the process.

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02: Getting Started

Get Started on Your Journey for Justice & Compensation

Understanding the signs, types, and causes of abuse & neglect.

Abuse and neglect take many forms. Staff members may deliberately physically assault, sexually assault, or emotionally assault nursing home patients. In other cases, understaffed facilities may fail to provide for a patient’s basic needs or ignore them altogether.

Knowing how a patient was abused and what led to the abuse is the first step.

Warning Signs of Nursing Home Abuse & Neglect

If you suspect your loved one is being abused or neglected, you might have witnessed the following warning signs of abuse:

  • Sudden changes in your relative’s behavior
  • Drastic weight gain or loss
  • Continued deterioration of health
  • Withdrawn behavior around staff members
  • Staff members intentionally isolate your relative without reason
  • Unexplained injuries

If any of these apply, call Nursing Home Justice today at (303) 775-8128.

You may need to discuss your concern with the facility, contact the local Ombudsman, or report the abuse to the Colorado Department of Human Services. We’re here to help you decide what route to take.

Common Types of Abuse & Injuries

Although abuse and neglect are similar, abuse is more direct and intentional. The resulting injuries may vary depending on the type of abuse.

Types of Abuse in Nursing Homes

You or your loved one may have experienced the following:

Injuries from Nursing Home Abuse

Nursing home abuse could result in the following injuries or consequences:

Common Forms of Neglect & Injuries

Where abuse is deliberate, neglect is more of a failure to act. For example, staff members may fail to care for patients’ most basic needs due to a lack of training or other negligent behavior.

Types of Nursing Home Neglect

The following examples of neglect might have caused you or your relative’s diminished condition:

  • Failure to bathe and provide proper hygiene
  • Failure to monitor and provide proper skincare
  • Failure to feed properly
  • Failure to provide adequate liquids
  • Failure to provide fall risk protection
  • Failure to monitor residents
  • Failure to prevent assaults by other residents known to be aggressive
  • Failure to administer medications properly
  • Failure to implement infectious disease controls
  • Failing to follow physician’s orders
  • Failing to timely notify physicians of the resident’s changes in condition
  • Failing to timely notify family members of the resident’s changes in condition
  • Failing to treat residents with dignity and respect

Injuries & Consequences of Nursing Home Neglect

If left untreated, the consequences of neglect are devastating and a sign of extreme mistreatment. The resulting injuries and consequences include:

Wrongful Death

Severe abuse and neglect suffered by nursing home residents may result in their death. You still have a chance to pursue justice for your loved ones even after they’ve moved on.

Retaining an attorney with medical knowledge and a thorough understanding of state and federal nursing home regulations is vital to pursuing a wrongful death claim.

Common Causes of Wrongful Death in Nursing Homes

There can be many causes of wrongful death. The most common include:

  1. Abuse or neglect that directly causes death
  2. Abuse or neglect that leads to deterioration of health, ultimately resulting in death
  3. Untimely treatment of an injury or medical condition
  4. Inadequate treatment of an injury or medical condition
  5. Medical and nursing errors
  6. Failure to provide skilled nursing care because Medicare benefits have run out
  7. Failure to refer the resident to a medical specialist
  8. Failure to timely transfer the resident to a hospital

Learn More About Wrongful Death

Underlying Causes of Nursing Home Abuse & Neglect

It’s not just the individual abuser; it’s the system.

There are very few stand-alone nursing facilities. Almost all nursing homes, rehabilitation facilities, and assisted living facilities are cogs in nationwide chains. The “local facility” is usually just a piece of paper — the license to operate a nursing home.

The nursing home, and all entities that support or manage the facility, are owned by a parent company. The parent company is responsible for distributing profits to its shareholders.

This profit motive permeates through every layer of the system — even down to the nurses and nursing aides.

Cost-Cutting Methods That Put Residents At Risk

These big corporations use the following methods to reduce costs and satisfy shareholders:

  • Hiring unqualified staff
  • Inadequately training and supervising workers
  • Overworking employees
  • Underpaying employees
  • Understaffing facilities
  • Underbudgeting
  • Profit-based bonuses (money and perks for administrators)
  • Cost-cutting competitions

These profit-boosting tactics are fueled by corporate greed and come at the residents’ expense. Since the staff is overworked and underpaid, they’re more inclined to cut corners that result in abuse, substandard care, and neglect.

Types of Elder & Disabled Care Facilities

Abuse and neglect are prevalent among elder and disabled care facilities. Knowing the source of your or your loved one’s abuse helps determine who’s liable.

Nursing Homes

Nursing homes generally consist of patients in advanced years. These patients require around-the-clock supervision and help with daily tasks such as eating, drinking, transferring into and out of bed, bathing, and other tasks where their mobility is limited. Nursing homes care for short-term and long-term patients.

Long-Term Care Facilities

Long-term care facilities are for individuals with conditions that require extensive daily care on a long-term or lifetime basis.

Long-term care facilities help physically and mentally incapacitated residents with everyday tasks, offer meals, and provide transportation and social activities.

Alzheimer and Memory Care Facilities

Alzheimer’s and Memory Care Facilities are for individuals with Alzheimer’s Disease and for mentally incapacitated persons. These facilities provide all the services that long-term care facilities offer and additional specialized services. Many of these facilities have secured units to prevent residents from wandering off.

Rehabilitation Facilities

Rehabilitation facilities are for patients that have suffered an injury or a worsening medical condition that can be healed or improved with temporary medical care and rehabilitation.

Their goal is to rehabilitate a patient’s injury as soon as possible so that the patient can return to home or their primary care facility.

Assisted Living Facilities

Assisted living facilities are not as medically focused as nursing homes or rehabilitation facilities. Patients live in apartment-style homes that offer daily meals, 24-hour supervision, staff members on-site, and recreational and social activities.

Group Homes

Group Homes provide care to a limited number of elderly or disabled persons within a private residence.

Thus, they are also called residential care facilities. There are group homes for the following:

  • Persons sixty years old and older
  • Intellectually and developmentally disabled persons
  • Persons with behavioral and mental health disorders

Nursing Home Justice can help you regardless of the care facility where the abuse or neglect occurred.

End the Abuse & Neglect Today

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Our firm reaches success through our attention to detail, genuine care for our clients, and relentless desire to make you whole.

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03: Compensation

What Compensation Can I Recover?

When nursing homes or other facilities disrespect a resident’s rights and suffer severe injury, they may have a case for compensation.

Damages in an Injury Case

Residents who suffered injury from a caregiver’s negligence can recover monetary damages for:

  • Medical expenses
  • Caregiver expenses
  • Physical pain and suffering
  • Mental and emotional distress
  • Physical impairment
  • Loss of income (for rehab patients that have or could have gone back to work)
  • Incidental expenses

Damages in a Wrongful Death Case

When a resident has died from abuse or neglect, the decedent’s surviving spouse, heirs, or designated beneficiary may file a wrongful death claim for the following:

  • Loss of financial support that the decedent would have provided to the surviving spouse, heirs, or designated beneficiary (if the decedent was returning to work)
  • Funeral expenses
  • Non-economic damages for grief, sorrow, and loss of companionship

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04: How to Prepare

Prepare for What Lies Ahead

As you begin your trek toward justice and compensation, there are some things you can do.

Remove Yourself or Loved One from the Facility

If there has been abuse or neglect, the first thing you should do is remove yourself or your relative from the facility.

Remaining in the facility could hurt your case. The nursing home would argue that if the abuse or neglect were serious, you would have left or removed your family member from the facility.

Obtain Records from the Facility

Elder care and disabled care facilities are required by state and federal law to provide you with copies of all the resident’s medical records and designated record sets within a short time frame.

However, the facility will often ignore such requests, delay the provision of records, provide only a portion of the records, and charge excessive copy costs — unless a lawyer makes the request. Nursing Home Justice can assist you in obtaining the records to save time and money.

Consider Filing a Complaint with the State

You may be unsure whether abuse or neglect occurred or what your next steps are. Our nursing home abuse lawyers can offer legal counsel and help resolve the problem with the facility, contact the local Ombudsman, or file a complaint with the state.

If you’re sure abuse or neglect has occurred, you should file a complaint with the Colorado Department of Public Health & Environment.

Give Your Nursing Home Lawyer Any Evidence You Have

Turning over any evidence you have to your attorney will significantly help your claim for compensation. This includes photos and videos of you or your loved one’s bedsores, bruises, cuts, or any sign of physical abuse or neglect.

Additionally, documenting any conversations with medical staff or signs of emotional abuse will be helpful.

Families Should Speak with One Voice

Although there may be occasional family disagreements about a family member’s medical or nursing care, the family should speak with one voice when abuse or neglect is suspected.

Time is crucial. Focusing on your claim will benefit the well-being of the elderly or disabled family member. But it will also help preserve evidence and effectively prosecute the case.

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05: What to Look For

Watch Out for Pitfalls Along the Way

Before and during the claims process, be mindful of anything that could hurt your case.

in this section, we'll cover:

Don’t Trust the Facility

The nursing facility that caused the abuse or neglect is not to be trusted, and they won’t go down without a fight. As stated earlier, the facility answers to the parent company, whose only concern is profit.

If your claim is successful, these parent companies will face investigations, penalties, negative publicity, and other harmful consequences.

Be Aware of the Statute of Limitations

There are various notice of claim periods and statutes of limitations depending upon who the claim is against, what the claims are, and the legal capacity of the victim.

Claims against governmental entities have a notice of claim period of six months. Intentional torts often have statutes of limitations of one year. General negligence and wrongful death claims have a statute of limitations of two years.

If legal action is not filed within the notice period or statute of limitations, the claim may be forever barred. Nursing Home Justice can advise you on the complexities of the notice periods and statutes of limitations.

Reach the Peak of Justice

The Colorado Department of Public Health & Environment set the Code of Colorado Regulations that all nursing homes and rehabilitation facilities must abide by.

This includes quality management standards, staff training, staff on duty, and regular audits, among other procedures.

When elder care and disabled care facilities fail to uphold these standards, and you or your loved one is a victim of injustice, we’ll restore dignity by:

  • Thoroughly investigating your claim and gathering the necessary evidence to determine fault.
  • Informing you of resident’s rights and the health standards facilities must maintain.
  • Relentlessly negotiating a fair settlement or pursuing maximum compensation in court.

Nursing Home Justice serves the entire state of Colorado, including:

  • Denver
  • Arvada
  • Aurora
  • Boulder
  • Brighton
  • Broomfield
  • Castle Rock
  • Centennial
  • Colorado Springs
  • Commerce City
  • Fort Collins
  • Glenwood Springs
  • Grand Junction
  • Greeley
  • Highlands Ranch
  • Lakewood
  • Littleton
  • Longmont
  • Loveland
  • Northglenn
  • Parker
  • Pueblo
  • Thornton
  • Westminster
  • Windsor