Nursing Home Fall Lawsuits in Missouri, Kansas and Arkansas

Interventions For Fall Risk Patients

Along with filing nursing home neglect lawsuits against nursing homes in Missouri, Kansas and Arkansas, our attorneys also help educate families with loved ones in nursing homes on what the morse fall scale is and how fall prevention in nursing homes can prevent falls in the elderly from occurring. If your loved one is at risk of falling, follow these nursing home fall intervention steps to ensure they are receiving proper care from the nursing home or long-term care facility.

• Have a family member attend every care plan meeting with the Nursing Director. In those meetings ask questions about the nursing facilities fall prevention policies.
• Take notes and ask for a copy of the risk for falls care plan on what nursing home employees say they are going to do to prevent your loved one from falling. You should also ask if their staff knows what to do when a resident falls in a nursing home.
• Make sure a qualified registered nurse or doctor does a proper risk for falls nursing diagnosis.
• Have family members visit the nursing home at different times during the day and evening. Whenever you visit the nursing facility ask if there are any updates or incidents involving your loved one.
• Monitor how many employees are available to transfer your family member to or from the bed or wheelchair.
• To assist with falling out of bed prevention, make sure all bed or chair alarms work and are in the proper place to notify staff if your family member needs help to move around the facility.
• If your loved one is in a nursing home for several years, then insist on reviewing the care plan on a quarterly basis.
• If there is a fall, then insist on seeing the post fall assessment and management outlining the details of how the fall occurred, who was involved and what changes will be made by the nursing home staff to prevent future falls.

Who Regulates Nursing Homes?

The laws of Missouri, Kansas, and Arkansas, require that residents who suffer a fall in a nursing home must be immediately evaluated by the nursing home staff to determine the reason for the fall and the extent of the resident’s injuries. The facility is responsible for notifying your loved one’s physician and family contact person immediately after the incident. Unfortunately, a lot of nursing homes perform a quick fall assessment and fail to contact family members or medical providers when a fall occurs.

In many instances, due to the nursing home’s negligence, residents suffer for days with broken bones before finally being sent to a hospital. Further, residents that suffer from loss of consciousness, fever, or abnormal blood pressure after a fall should be closely monitored by the nursing home staff. Finally, once a nursing home resident falls, the nursing home must be made to improve the care being provided to that specific resident and to identify steps that will be taken to improve the resident’s safety in the future.