Two residents at Hope Creek Care in East Moline, Illinois were seriously injured when staff failed to properly use a mechanical lift to transfer residents from their beds to wheelchairs. Mechanical lifts are complicated safety devices that utilize a sling and a number of straps to secure the resident while being transferred through the air.
In what was no doubt a time saving maneuver, the staff were only utilizing some of the straps during transfers and, predictably, this had drastic and painful consequences for the residents. Two residents suffered nursing home falls as a result. One resident only sustained a black eye, but the other sustained fractures to their eye-socket and clavicle (collarbone).
Hope Creek Care Center in East Moline, Illinois is a 245 bed nursing home. It’s a County run nursing home, not a for-profit home. Typically, a government or a non-profit nursing home tends to provide a higher quality of care than for-profit nursing homes.
This isn’t just my opinion as a nursing home attorney; study after study has found that employees and residents of non-profit or government homes are happier and more satisfied than their for-profit counterparts.
And, for the most part, Hope Creek Care Center does seem to be providing an adequate level of care despite its extremely high number of beds and chronic understaffing. Hope Creek Care has more than double the average number of nursing home residents for the state and yet they have fewer (5) than the average number of deficiencies for Illinois.
They were given only 2 stars out of 5 for staffing, and it’s those corners than probably led to the falls suffered by the residents. Nursing home falls are extremely dangerous. Because of the frail overall health typical of many nursing home residents, nursing home falls can lead to infections, pneumonia, bed sores, and death.
If you have a loved one who has experienced multiple nursing home falls in an Illinois nursing home, and you feel they might be the victim of nursing home neglect, contact my law offices for a free and confidential evaluation of your case.