Nursing Home Disputes
Disputes with a nursing home may arise over such things as the quality of the food, a bothersome roommate, lack of privacy, or the level and quality of activities that do not live up to what you were promised. While the perfect nursing home does not exist, at what stage does the level of care become so inadequate as to require legal or other intervention? Sometimes you might need the involvement of a geriatric care manager who can make an independent evaluation of the resident and who has sufficient knowledge of nursing homes to know whether the one in question is meeting the appropriate standard of care. A geriatric care manager is a Health and Human services professional with a specialized body of knowledge and experience related to aging and elder care issues. You can find one through the National Association of Professional Geriatric Care Managers.
Options
Following is a list of options for a family member in ascending order of degree. Move down the list as the severity of the problem increases or the facility fails to respond to the less drastic actions you take. In all cases, take detailed notes of your contacts with facility staff and descriptions of your family member and his or her care. Always note the date and the full name of the person with whom you communicate.
- Talk to staff. Let them know what you expect, what you care about and what your family member cares about. Visit often. This may easily solve the problem.
- Talk to a supervisor, such as the nursing chief or an administrator. Explain the problem as you see it. Do it with the expectation that the issue will be favorably resolved, and it may well be.
- Hold a meeting with the appropriate nursing home personnel. This can be a regularly scheduled care planning meeting or you can ask for a special meeting to resolve a problem that wasn't taken care of more informally.
- Contact the state ombudsperson assigned to the nursing home. He or she should be able to intervene and get an appropriate result. Contact your Ombudsman Program.
If the problem constitutes a violation of the residents’ rights (described above, and in more detail in Nursing Home Residents’ Rights), report it to your state’s licensing agency. The ombudsman can give you information in order to accomplish that. This should put necessary pressure on the facility.
- Hire a geriatric care manager to intervene. An advocate who is not as personally involved as you are and who understands how nursing homes function as institutions can help you determine what is possible and can teach the facility to make the necessary changes.
- Hire a lawyer. While a lawyer may be necessary to assert the resident's rights, the involvement of an attorney may also escalate the dispute to a point where it is more difficult to resolve. This is why this option is listed as the second-to-last on the list. But when all else fails, an elder law attorney has the tools to make the facility obey the law.
- Move your relative. If nothing else works, move your family member to a better facility. This may be difficult, depending on the situation, but it may be the only solution. It does not prevent you from pursuing legal compensation for any harm inflicted on your family member while at the earlier facility.
Read an article on Elder Abuse. | 
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