Elder Law

Patient Breaks Hip Despite Sounding Alarms

By Levin & Perconti

The Minneapolis Star Tribune published a three part story exposing the great amount of falls taking place at nursing homes. In one instance, despite a bed alarm and other safeguards, an 89 year old woman got up undetected, fell and broke her hip. The victim died five days later. The nursing home had put up a lot of safeguards, such as a bed alarm, a motion sensor, a sound monitor and a perimeter mattress, so that she might not fall. However, still in the middle of the night she got up and walked. The alarm sounded and nobody heard them. She moved a trash can into the hallway and took a bad fall. There was no one at the nurse?s station to hear the alarms go off. Eventually, the nurse heard the victim yelling and the alarms screeching. She was lying on the floor with a broken right hip. The woman never recovered from the fall. To read more about the fall expose, please click the link.

Full post as published by Illinois Nursing Home Abuse Blog on November 27, 2009 (boomark / email).