Home Health Abuse

Compassionate Home Health Abuse Lawyer Serving Kansas City, Missouri

Nursing homes are not an option for some people. Many elderly parents disapprove of staying in nursing homes. They have requested that someone assist them in staying in their houses as they age. This indicates that they will want the assistance of home health aides. You, like many families, must have faith that home health care neglect will not occur. As in a nursing home, the elderly are cared for by home health aides. Instead, many mistreat or ignore them. If you suspect that your loved one is being abused by a home health aide, our home health abuse lawyer can help.

Our compassionate Kansas City home health abuse lawyer at the Ricket Law Firm has years of experience fighting for the rights of victims and their families. We strive ardently for the utmost compensation families require following such catastrophes. We are also aware that when a family steps up, they have the power to safeguard many more vulnerable individuals from abuse or neglect. Contact us immediately to discuss your situation in a complimentary and private consultation.

Why Do You Need a Home Health Abuse Lawyer in Missouri?

home health abuse lawyer

Cases of elder abuse deserve the utmost compassion. Therefore, we treat complaints of home health abuse and neglect with care. We recognize that your loved one has endured real trauma, and our legal care will reflect this. You may determine that you require the services of our skilled home health abuse lawyer because:

You Must Make Your Abuse Claim Immediately

It is best to initiate legal proceedings without delay. Evidence of abuse may not persist indefinitely. If you do not know which evidence to seek or how to document it, it is possible to lose such evidence. Our legal personnel will:

  • Meet with you and the abused family member
  • Refer your family member to certified medical personnel
  • Document all injuries resulting from mistreatment
  • Identify responsible parties
  • Take prompt legal action against those accountable

You may have a job, a family, and other obligations. Our legal firm has the time and means to accomplish crucial case-related responsibilities.

You Are Unfamiliar With Elder Abuse Issues

We pray that your loved one has never been the victim of abuse. If this is your first experience with elder abuse, you may not know much about the issue. Even little is known about pursuing justice for abuse. Our firm’s experience and knowledge can be of considerable use. Without such information, you may need to conduct numerous hours of research:

  • Symptoms and signs of elder abuse
  • How to take legal action following abuse
  • How to evaluate abuse accountability
  • Appropriate damage in situations of elder abuse
  • The remaining factors in a case of nursing home abuse

We have a knowledgeable home health abuse lawyer who is very adept with this kind of case. We may also employ specialists in elder abuse to assist you with your case.

What Constitutes a Home Health Aide?

Home health aides are employed in healthcare, but their duties differ from those of certified nurses recruited to give care in the home. Although certification may be required, a home health aide is neither a certified nurse nor a qualified medical practitioner, nor are they paid to provide medical care.

Instead, home health aides assist patients who require assistance with “activities of daily living” (ADLs) without risk of damage due to a disability, accident, or other medical condition.

Home health aides frequently assist patients with the following tasks:

  • Personal bathing, grooming, and hygiene practices
  • Dressing and undressing
  • Food preparation and consumption
  • Safely moving from one location to another
  • Utilizing the restroom

Home health aides may assist with grocery shopping, errands, checking if your loved one has taken their meds correctly, doing housework, laundry, and more.

What Are the Reasons Why Home Health Abuse Happen?

Home health aides are frequently in a position to exploit their patients if they so want. They are permitted to enter the residence often. Especially when no other family members are around, home health aides may have unrestricted access to your loved one’s body and money.

In addition, many home health facilities’ hiring and training methods are substandard. Because of this, home health aides are:

  • poorly educated
  • underpaid
  • overworked

Sadly, this dangerous confluence of factors lays the environment for elderly abuse and neglect. Patients die unquestionably due to home health attendants’ cruel and careless actions.

What Are the Common Types of Home Health Abuse and Neglect in Missouri?

Abuse and neglect may manifest in several ways. When your family needs a home health aide, vigilance is essential, particularly if you have any cause to suspect abuse or neglect. Contact Ricket Law Firm immediately if you suspect that your loved one has been subjected to any of the following types of abuse by a home health aide:

Financial Abuse

Home health aides may access mail, computers, and other private files and information belonging to your loved one. This places them in an advantageous position to exploit your loved one by stealing credit card information or other property, faking signatures on checks or other papers, or even delaying care in return for higher payments or other financial rewards.

The elderly are particularly vulnerable to financial exploitation because they may be inexperienced with technology and require assistance managing their finances.

Emotional Abuse

Probably, your loved one relies on their home health assistant for assistance with basic daily duties. This places the home health aide in a position to emotionally abuse their patient by screaming, bullying, manipulating, intimidating, or simply ignoring and isolating your loved one.

Physical Abuse

Even if your loved one is allowed to remain at home, they may still be susceptible to physical abuse by a caretaker. Examples of physical abuse include kicking and beating, incorrect use of restraints, poor medicine delivery, and deprivation of food and drink.

Sexual Abuse

Individuals requiring memory care are particularly vulnerable to sexual assault by their home health workers. In such situations, your loved one may be unable to recognize the abuse, making it all the more vital that you seek assistance.

Isolation

Home health aides may be the only human contact for patients who require care but have no live relatives nearby. Isolation is a kind of emotional abuse that entails denying your loved ones access to family and friends via visits, telephone, email, and postal mail.

What Types of Injuries Caused by a Home Health Aide’s Irresponsibility Warrant a Lawsuit?

Our skilled Kansas City home health abuse lawyer often handles negligence claims against home health aides involving:

Falls Under a Home Health Nurse’s Monitoring

Undoubtedly, falls are the most prevalent harm for which we sue home health aides. The frequency of falls among older persons is not justified by the fact that your loved one had a fall while in the care of a private home health aide. Due to staffing ratios, falls in nursing homes are less avoidable than in home health.

In a nursing facility, one assistant may be responsible for eight patients with high acuity. At home, the aide is entirely responsible for ensuring the safety and supervision of your mother. When you employ a home care assistant, they are expected to supervise and help your loved one with activities of daily life. This includes walking, eating, and restroom use.

This is the primary responsibility of the home health aide and the reason they are with your loved one. If your loved one suffers a fall while under the care of a home health aide while being neglected, unsupervised, and unaided, contact our company immediately so that we may get medical records and interview critical witnesses.

Since the primary purpose of the private duty nurse is to assist your parent, almost all home health aide fall instances include carelessness. There is no justification for allowing clients to fall while being compensated to oversee, help, and monitor them.

Broken Bones Due to Home Health Nurse Abusive Treatment

Falls are the most prevalent cause of broken bones in the elderly. If no falls have been reported to you, the home health aide may be concealing another traumatic incident.

If your loved one sustained a fracture while receiving home health care, you should ask them privately what occurred. If they are non-verbal,  a physician or hospital should examine them.

Look for further injuries, such as bruises that may indicate home health aide abuse. Take photographs of anything extraordinary. You should promptly report any suspected elder abuse or neglect.

Pressure Ulcers Caused by Neglectful Home Health Aide

Pressure sores are lesions that form on the buttocks and heels of a patient owing to an inability to relieve pressure. If your loved one is bedridden or uses a wheelchair, the private home health assistant is responsible for removing them from these pressure spots. Failure to do so for an extended time will result in skin deterioration, blistering, and ultimately an open pressure wound.

Pressure ulcers are never acceptable, and if they are severe enough, you must consult our home health abuse lawyer in Kansas City. Get in touch with us immediately if your loved one acquired a Stage 3, Stage 4, or unstageable pressure ulcer while receiving private home care.

Not Dialing 911 and Transporting the Patient to the Hospital

When a private duty aide provides in-home care for an older adult, they function as the individual’s only link to medical treatment. If the patient is in difficulty, the home health aide must phone 911 and transport the patient to the hospital. Our competent home health abuse lawyer has handled countless cases in which the home health aide neglected the patient’s health emergency, depriving the victim’s physicians of essential treatment hours.

This occurs most frequently in situations of stroke. A stroke is likely the cause of an older client’s increased perplexity, sudden inability to converse, loss of use of one side of the body, etc. In these situations, time is of the essence. Therefore a home health aide must phone 911 quickly. By neglecting to get the patient to the hospital quickly, a home health aide endangers the patient needlessly. This may result in irreparable harm or wrongful death.

In addition, we have filed lawsuits against home health services whose aides concealed fall-related injuries and failed to seek medical care for fall-related injuries. The delay in notifying 911 resulted from an attempt to hide the first injury caused by the home health aide’s negligence. This type of misconduct compounds the severity of the original injury.

Choking Causes Deaths

Many frail elderly suffer from swallowing difficulties. It is relatively uncommon for these weak people to require feeding help. Some even demand a choke-risk-specific diet. Others can consume solid foods but require monitoring to prevent choking.

As mentioned, a home health aide has just one client while on the clock. Those are your parents. There is no justification for abandoning a patient during a meal and allowing them to suffocate to death.

Under the supervision of a home health aide, choking fatalities are unacceptable. If a private duty nurse leaves a patient unattended during a meal and the patient subsequently suffocates, this is undoubtedly a case of negligence by a home health aide.

Unknown Unjustified Death

Suppose your loved one died under strange circumstances while in the care of a home health aide. File a report with your local police station. Additionally, notify the relevant state agency of possible abuse or neglect.

If your family member has died and you have doubts about the private caregiver’s explanation, take urgent action. Our knowledgeable Kansas City home health abuse lawyer may assist you in notifying the proper authorities of the wrongful death.

What Are the Warning Signs of Home Health Abuse?

Although it can be challenging to establish abuse or neglect of your loved one, you should call our professional Kansas City home health abuse lawyer if you observe any of the following potential red flags:

  • Changes in behavior, such as sadness or emotional separation from loved ones that are pronounced
  • Withdrawal from formerly-enjoyed communal activities by your loved one
  • Absence of communication or interaction where there was before constant communication
  • Unusual financial transactions
  • Weight reduction
  • Frequent or inexplicable accidents or falls
  • Any bodily signs that may indicate physical or sexual abuse are present

In many circumstances, an abusive home health aide will use fear or intimidation to pressure your loved one into acting as if everything is normal when it is not.

When you suspect abuse, but your loved one is unwilling or unable to seek assistance, you may need to take more aggressive measures to investigate and establish whether your loved one is suffering from abuse or neglect.

The Ricket Law Firm is here to assist. We serve clients throughout Missouri and provide all prospective clients with a free consultation. Call immediately to find out how we may fight to bring accountability to the fullest extent of the law to the home health aide who abused or neglected your loved one.

What Are the Steps Involved in Filing a Home Health Abuse Case?

Contact our home health abuse lawyer to initiate an investigation into the situation.

Our legal office will acquire your family member’s home health agency records and paperwork, as well as any EMS or ambulance records and pertinent hospital information.

An expert will evaluate these documents to determine guilt and the cause of your family member’s injuries.

We will inform the home health aide’s insurance.

If you cannot reach a pre-litigation settlement, we will launch a negligence lawsuit against the home health aide.

We will undertake discovery and subpoena witnesses if the lawsuit is not settled before discovery.

We will resolve the matter before a jury if we cannot reach an out-of-court settlement.

What Types of Evidence Strengthen a Home Health Abuse Lawsuit?

In situations of home health aide liability, documentation is crucial. Your relative will likely be unable to testify. However, the assistant can present her version of the tale. This needs evidence to counteract any “spin” coming from the assist.

Important pieces of evidence for showing home health aide negligence include photographs, 911 calls, compromising text messages, apology voicemails, and video security footage. Please ensure that these items are backed up if you possess them. Unfortunately, these bits of evidence can be lost, erased, or manipulated, so please save them immediately.

Who is Accountable for the Uninsured Home Health Aide’s Negligence?

Certain private home assistants have their insurance. Nevertheless, most do not. In addition, most individual aides have no assets, so if you obtain a judgment against them, you would likely be unable to collect.

However, home health agencies are virtually always accountable for the wrongdoing of their aides. This is true regardless of whether the aides are government employees or independent contractors.

How Can Our Skilled Home Health Abuse Lawyer Help?

Once abuse or neglect has been revealed, our skilled home health abuse lawyer can strive to prove your entitlement to recover compensation by:

  • Interviewing your loved one to learn their story of the abuse
  • If your loved one cannot testify, you should consult with professionals to collect proof of the potential for abuse.
  • Friends and neighbors are interviewed to obtain their accounts of the abuse.
  • Examining the home health aide agency to see whether they hire, train, and monitor their home health aides appropriately
  • Locating any certifications completed by the home health aide to ascertain certification requirements

For many years, Ricket Law Firm has advocated on behalf of people who have been mistreated. We have devoted our whole career and profession to holding abusers financially accountable for their terrible crimes. As we search for proof of abuse by a home health aide, we will not leave any stone unturned.

Our seasoned Kansas City home health abuse lawyer will ensure you receive compensation for:

  • All medical and rehabilitation expenses
  • The price of psychological counseling
  • Restitution in cases of financial exploitation
  • Non-economic damages include compensation for pain, suffering, loss of life’s pleasures, humiliation, and terror induced by the abuse

Get in Touch With Our Home Health Abuse Lawyer to Discuss All Your Concerns

Once you have found any indication that a home health aide is abusing or neglecting your loved one, you must seek quick assistance to stop the abuse.

Contact Ricket Law Firm to explore your options for holding responsible parties accountable for their actions. To book a consultation with our competent Kansas City home health abuse lawyer, please complete the online contact form or give us a call. Let’s talk about your abuse case!

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