Failure to Send Symptomatic Patients to Hospitals

Nursing homes in Homestead, Hollywood, Miami, Coral Springs, and all South Florida communities have an obligation to take reasonable precautions to protect their residents during the COVID-19 pandemic. Many nursing homes are working to encourage social distancing and are implementing new hygiene techniques and processes to keep residents safe.

Contact tracing, wearing protective equipment, and testing are only part of the battle, however. If, despite a nursing home’s best efforts, a resident does develop COVID-19 symptoms, it’s important nursing homes provide that resident with adequate medical attention. In many cases, it means sending them to the hospital.

One of the steps which nursing homes must take is to send symptomatic COVID-19 patients to hospitals. When residents of a nursing home develop symptoms such as cough, fever, loss of smell and taste, unexplained rash, or gastrointestinal problems, sending them to a hospital is important for a few reasons.

First, it helps keep staff and other residents from contracting the virus. Someone who is coughing because of COVID-19, for example, may be spreading droplets each time they cough, increasing the odds that the virus will spread. A symptomatic COVID-19 patient is highly contagious and removing them to a hospital protects everyone in the nursing home.

Since nursing home residents are elderly and may have underlying medical conditions, sending symptomatic COVID-19 patients to hospitals is also important to help ensure they get the correct medical treatment. An elderly person who gets COVID-19 is more likely to experience complications such as pneumonia, respiratory problems, heart problems, and fatalities. Getting a symptomatic COVID-19 patient to a hospital promptly and quickly can ensure that they get medical attention from a trained team, improving their chances of survival.

When staff take it upon themselves to hesitate or to delay getting symptomatic COVID-19 patients to a hospital, they may be putting lives at risk. If you have a loved one in a nursing home in South Florida, you may be worried what will happen to them if they do get the virus. It is appropriate to ask the nursing home what their plan is. If a nursing home has failed to send your loved one to a hospital for more intensive medical care when they developed symptoms of COVID-19, it is appropriate to ask questions. You have the right to find out what happened, especially if you loved one suffered serious injury as a result.

If your loved one has been injured because staff at a nursing home in Hialeah, Cutler Bay, Florida City, or any South Florida community failed to respond appropriately to symptomatic COVID-19 patients, you may have a legal claim. In fact, many families across the country are currently coming together to file legal claims and class-action lawsuits against negligent nursing homes accountable for the spread of COVID-19 and for preventable deaths. To find out whether you have a claim, contact Flaxman Law Group at 1-866-352-9626 (1-866-FLAXMAN) for a free accident consultation with a Homestead nursing home abuse and negligence attorney.