The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette recently reported that “Arkansas’ significant error citation rates far surpass those in most other states, and the Natural State is the only state that has ranked in the in the top 3 for percent of errors in each of the past five years.”  For the last decade, Arkansas’ significant medication error rate has been “nearly triple the national average over the past decade,” and nursing homes in Arkansas have been flagged for such errors at four times the rate of nursing homes in Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and New Mexico.  These errors, and other forms of nursing home abuse and neglect, are often traced to a common issue – staff shortages.  

Societies are often judged based on the way they protect their sick and their elderly.  At Gibson & Keith, we understand that your loved ones deserve the same levels of dignity, care and respect from nursing homes as they would receive from you.  However, some nursing home owners are motivated by greed rather than compassion.  Rather than sufficiently staff and train their facilities, they cut every corner imaginable and set up separate companies to provide ancillary services (i.e., laundry, food service, etc.) at inflated prices to milk every dollar they can out of their “non-profit” nursing homes.  These schemes are egregious, and the facilities that employ them know that, inevitably, their inadequate staffing will cause serious injury or death to one of their residents.

Common symptoms and examples of nursing home abuse and neglect include:

Our loved ones deserve better.  Nursing homes must be held accountable when they negligently or willfully cause their patients to suffer unnecessary harm.  If you retain our firm, it sends a bold message to these bad actors:  we will not tolerate the abuse and neglect of the sick and elderly members of our community.  If you suspect that your loved one has suffered abuse or neglect from their nursing home, contact us immediately to schedule a consultation with one of our attorneys and discuss how Gibson & Keith can help you.