It was only a few months ago that I wrote on this blog about the wrongful death that occurred at the Lebanon Care Center in Lebanon, Illinois. At that time, the failure to properly train staff in sterilizing equipment and notifying emergency personnel when a resident’s health is in jeopardy led to the completely preventable and tragic death of a young man.
Lebanon Care Center in Lebanon, Illinois is now being investigated for failure to prevent and treat bed sores that developed at the facility. While the two cases differ in detail, the underlying cause remains: a failure to properly hire and train competent staff.
Bed sores are, perhaps, the most terrible injury that can occur at a nursing home.
They begin as small white or red marks on the skin and can develop into open wounds that expose muscle and bone. The small marks are called Stage 1 bed sores (or pressure ulcers). There are four stages of bed sores that progressively get worse until they reach the unstageable designation. That usually indicates that bone is visible.
A bed sore should never develop in a nursing home, and any bed sore that is already on a resident at the time of admission should never get worse. Bed sores are to be measured on a daily or regular basis for monitoring.
As an Illinois bed sore lawyer, I know that the development of bed sores is one of the key signs of nursing home neglect in a facility.
The reason for that is that, plainly put, bed sores are caused by inadequate care.
- The most well known cause of a bed sore is being left in a seated or lying position for an extended period of time, usually many hours.
- Another cause of bed sores is inadequate hydration and nutrition.
- Another contributing factor is dampness. When residents who are incontinent aren’t promptly or regularly changed, bed sores are far more likely to develop.
Six residents at the Lebanon Care Center have developed avoidable bed sores at the facility. Several residents, under doctors’ orders to be turned every two hours, were left in their wheelchairs for long hours during the Illinois Department of Public Health Inspection. Another resident went days between assessment checks for his pressure ulcer.
Clearly, the administration at Lebanon Care Center are not taking adequate measures to protect residents and ensure they are receiving proper care. If you have a loved one who has developed bed sores at the Lebanon Care Center or any Illinois nursing home, you should contact our Chicago nursing home lawyers for a free and confidential evaluation of your case.