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Nursing home abuse is a particularly troubling concept but, unfortunately, common in the State of Indiana. If you or a loved one have recently experienced nursing home abuse or neglect, it is in your best interest to report it to the state for further investigation.
Reports can be filed online, by email, over the phone, or through mail. While you can report nursing home abuse anonymously, it may be helpful to provide your name and contact information so that the investigators can reach you if they have questions about the content of your report.
If you need help submitting a report or have questions about your legal right to recover damages for injuries suffered from nursing home abuse, reach out to the Indiana nursing home abuse attorneys at Wruck Paupore. Call our offices at (765) 295-6920 today for a free initial case assessment to help determine your next steps.
Nursing home abuse in Indiana comes in several different forms. Abuse can be intentionally harmful in a physical or sexual sense, but it may also be emotional abuse, such as taunting or public humiliation. Abuse can also be financial, as nursing home residents often have accounts that nursing home staff can access and manipulate.
Neglect is also a form of nursing home abuse. Just because the administration or individual nursing home staff members did not intentionally harm the resident does not mean that they shouldn’t be punished if they neglect to provide for the resident’s basic needs.
These needs include access to food, water, shelter, medical care, and communication with family and friends. Nursing home residents have legal rights to freedom from restraints and access to their medical files and treatment plans. Nursing homes will also be found neglectful if they do not provide the means to maintain proper hygiene or fail to implement and execute sanitary protocols to prevent illness or disease.
The facility must also be made safe for residents, which may require the installation of additional lighting, railings, support bars, and grounds that are stable for walking and free of slippery surfaces so that residents can access common areas without endangering themselves.
If you or a loved one were injured due to any of the above failures by a nursing home or staff member, you should look to report your experience and contact our Indianapolis nursing home abuse attorney as soon as possible.
If you or a loved one has suffered from nursing home abuse or neglect and you wish to file a report, the place to go would be the Indiana Department of Health (IDOH). The IDOH provides a form on its official website for Reporting a Complaint about a Health Care Facility. The complaint form can be submitted via mail or electronically through the website. Most people we talk to prefer submitting these complaints electronically.
For mailed complaints, use the address listed below:
Indiana Department of Health
Health Care Facility Complaint Program
2 North Meridian Street, 4B
Indianapolis, IN 46204
However, you are not required to use the official form to report an instance of nursing home abuse to the IDOH. You can email the IDOH a description of the issue or call their toll-free hotline.
Because every circumstance of nursing home abuse or neglect is different, the IDOH investigation will rely heavily on all of the information you can provide to them. Therefore, you and your Fort Wayne nursing home abuse attorney can work together to compile all of the relevant details into your complaint.
You should be clear about the name and location of the facility in question and the individual staff members or departments involved in the abusive incident or incidents. This should also include any conversations had with administrative staff to alert them to the abuse. If there were multiple instances of abuse or neglect, you should do your best to indicate the abuse patterns, such as what time of day the abuse would commonly occur and when the abusive or neglectful pattern began.
Rather than simply stating that some form of abuse or neglect occurred, it is very helpful to go into detail about the events that transpired. While this may be difficult for someone who has recently suffered abuse, this is the best way to point investigators in the right direction.
If the report is vague in certain areas, the IDOH may reach out to the complainant for clarity where necessary. However, this may delay the process. If the situation presents an imminent risk, the IDOH will do its best to prioritize its investigative action. Still, when time is of the essence, you will want the investigators to have all the information they need at their disposal.
For those worried about the consequences of retaliation or damage to their reputation if they were to come forward, you should know that you do have the option to report nursing home abuse anonymously.
However, the reporting form clarifies that the IDOH will keep your name and contact information confidential if you choose to provide it. The IDOH will conduct their investigation into the report the same whether you disclose your identity or not. They ask for your name and contact information so that the investigators may reach out to you with any further questions that they might have about the facility, the nature of the allegations, or the victim’s medical status.
If you discover signs of abuse against your loved one in a nursing home, you can file a lawsuit against the nursing home and the people responsible for the abuse. How you approach the lawsuit depends on the nature of the abuse and what kind of evidence we have. It is crucial that the abuse is reported to the authorities so they can investigate and hopefully uncover evidence.
In many abuse cases, nursing home employees are carrying out the abuse are. They might be nurses, orderlies, or even maintenance workers who should not be working directly with residents. Whoever it might be, we can help you sue the individuals who perpetrated the abuse.
We need evidence that connects this person or people to the abuse and your loved one. For example, there might be security camera footage of the abuse. We might also rely on testimony from your loved one or others who knew about the abuse. If we can prove that the employee or employees of the nursing home perpetrated the abuse, we should also sue the nursing home.
The nursing home might be held vicariously liable for the abuse. Generally, when employees cause injuries through the nature of their jobs, their employer might be held vicariously liable. In such a case, the nursing home would also be responsible for covering your damages.
If we cannot have the nursing home held vicariously liable, we should explore options for having them held directly liable. Vicarious liability does not always apply in cases where abusers acted intentionally. If this is the case, direct liability might be worth looking into.
One possibility is to check out the abusive employee’s background. If they have a history of violent or abusive behavior, we might argue that the nursing home should be held directly liable for negligent hiring or negligent entrustment. Potential employees who work with vulnerable people often must be carefully screened, and background checks are common. If, after all this, the nursing home hired them anyway or did not do its due diligence in making sure the employee was safe, they may be held liable for injuries stemming from abuse.
Talk to a lawyer as soon as possible after discovering that your loved one has been abused in their nursing home. If you have not done so already, your lawyer can help you contact the police and other relevant authorities to make sure the case is thoroughly investigated, evidence is preserved, and the abusers are brought to justice.
It is crucial to get moving quickly, as your time to file a lawsuit against the nursing home and possibly others is limited. The statute of limitation under I.C. § 34-11-2-4(a)(1) gives plaintiffs only 2 years to file injury lawsuits. The limitation period should start from the most recent instance of abuse. This might be very important for those whose loved ones were abused repeatedly over an extended period of time. If you are not quite sure when the abuse began or when was the most recent instance of abuse, we can argue that the limitation period should start from the day you discovered the abuse.
If time is running short and you have not yet filed a lawsuit, talk to your lawyer about whether you can have the limitation period tolled. Tolling is like pausing the clock on your time limit to sue, and it can only be done under very specific conditions.
According to § 34-11-6-1, tolling may be available for those with legal disabilities. A legal disability is something that prevents you from filing a lawsuit on your own or hinders your ability to understand your rights. A common example is infancy, or being a child. Minors often cannot sue for injuries alone, so the limitation period should not begin until they turn 18. Since many, if not most, people living in nursing homes are adults, this likely would not apply to your case.
Tolling is also available for people with mental conditions that keep them from understanding their rights or that they have been injured. This is more likely to come up in nursing home abuse cases, as many nursing home residents have mental conditions like dementia, memory loss, or Alzheimer’s. In such cases, the limitation period does not begin until the disability is removed.
Damages in nursing home abuse cases can be substantial. Victims are often badly hurt and in need of serious medical care. They might also be living with deep-seated trauma that could last them the rest of their lives. Your lawyer can help you make sure that all your damages are accounted for and compensated.
Economic damages and financial costs often revolve around medical care. If your loved one was physically abused and injured, they need medical attention, which might be costly. Doctors often find signs of past injuries from abuse that were never reported or treated. Treating them later might be more expensive, and more treatment might be necessary.
We should also consider the costs of moving your loved one to a new care facility or taking them into your home. Many families decide to take their loved ones home, but they must hire a private nurse to help them. These costs can be very high, and you deserve compensation.
The non-economic injuries from abuse can last a lifetime. People living in nursing homes are often very vulnerable as it is. They rely on nursing home staff members to care for them. When they are abused, they might face significant psychological distress and emotional turmoil. The fact that nursing home residents often cannot leave on their own usually leaves them feeling trapped with their abusers. Your loved one deserves compensation and justice for everything they have endured.
Reach out to one of our experienced Milwaukee nursing home abuse attorneys for a free case evaluation by calling (765) 295-6920.
Don is a founding partner and one of the nation’s top-ranked personal injury litigators. He is a member of the Multi-million Dollar Advocates Forum, which includes less than 1% of the nation’s trial lawyers, and awarded the highest ranking given by Martindale Hubbel and AVVO.
More importantly, Don understands representing personal injury victims is about more than recovering the best settlement: it’s about helping clients get back on their feet and supporting them in every aspect of their recovery.
In nearly all cases, our clients seek compensation from the wrongdoer’s insurance company. Before forming Wruck Paupore, Jason worked for a prominent law firm representing some of the world’s largest insurers. This experience gives Jason a deep understanding of the insurance industry and the strategies it uses to pay injury victims as little as possible.
Jason -- and our entire team -- put this inside knowledge to work to force insurance companies to pay what is actually owed. Often, we use the insurance company’s own tactics against them as we fight for the full compensation our client deserves.
For more than four decades, Keith has been fighting for injury victims. During that time, he’s watched the insurance industry change, with insurers now more interested in protecting their stock price than treating injury victims fairly.
Since the beginning, Keith has put people first. From his childhood in Gary, Indiana during the 1960’s and working his way through law school, Keith has risen to become one of the Midwest’s most respected trial lawyers. He has never forgotten that being a lawyer is about helping people -- and seeing injury victims through struggles in a way that could change their lives forever.
Over the decades, Keith, Don and Jason have fought relentlessly for clients, even when other lawyers have said the case was impossible to win.
Contact Us:
Wruck Paupore P.C.
Injury Lawyers
275 Joliet St. Suite #250
Dyer, IN 46311
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