Nursing home fined for failing to alert doctor to change in resident's condition

A California nursing home was fined $100,000 by state authorities after a resident died when the nursing staff failed to alert the resident's doctor about changes in the resident's condition after she was given an increased dose of an anticoagulant, or blood-thinner, medication.  One of the risks of giving that kind of medication is that the patient will have internal bleeding in the brain. 

Once the woman started taking the medication, she began to behave differently, complain of headaches, and slur her words.  The doctor, unaware of the changes, increased the dosage of the medication, resulting in more severe bleeding which caused her death.  The resident's death certificate indicates that the cause of death was bleeding due to inappropriate medication usage.  The inappropriate medication can be the basis of a wrongful death suit.

Many people are surprised to find out how seldom doctors are actually at the nursing home, and almost every nurse I have ever taken the deposition of in a nursing home suit will agree that one of their functions is to serve as the eyes and ears of a doctor because the doctor is frequently not in the facility.  Part of their job is to report changes in the resident's condition to the doctor so the doctor can issue a new order, come in and see the resident, or send the resident to the hospital.

In many of the nursing home abuse and neglect cases we have handled we have found that there were long standing declines in the resident's condition that the doctor was not notified about until there was a crisis.  Part of what we do as experienced Chicago nursing home lawyers is to thoroughly review the chart to determine whether there was an earlier change in condition which required physician notification.  Failing to notify the doctor of a change in condition is a form of neglect and can be the basis of nursing home lawsuit.