According to the Virginia Administrative Code – Nursing Home Neglect is “failure to provide timely and consistent services, treatment or care to a resident or residents, that are necessary to obtain or maintain the resident or resident’s health safety or comfort; or a failure to provide timely and consistent goods and services necessary to avoid physical harm, mental anguish, or mental illness.”
Nursing Home Abuse is much different. Abuse is defined as “willful infliction of injury, unreasonable confinement, intimidation, or punishment with resulting physical harm, pain or mental anguish, or deprivation by an individual, including caretaker, of goods or services that are necessary to attain or maintain physical, mental or psychological well being. This includes verbal, sexual, physical, or mental abuse.
Abuse is easy to identify. But neglect can come in many forms. Failure to provide medications, failure to prevent falls, failure to provide PT when ordered by physician.
Please do not hesitate to call our office if you suspect abuse or neglect of a loved one an a Virginia or West Virginia nursing home.