Nursing Home Abuse & Neglect
At Paul & Perkins P.A., nursing home abuse and neglect is close to our hearts. As a young lawyer, David Paul spent a majority of his time traveling the state defending nursing homes in abuse and neglect cases. It was a wearisome experience for David that made him realize he was meant to be on the other side of the courtroom working on behalf of senior citizens.
Today, Paul & Perkins P.A. is a tremendous advocate of the rights of senior citizens, and we work diligently to fight nursing home abuse. Proactively, David Paul is a member of the state taskforce on nursing home legislation, and also lectures throughout the country on nursing home abuse.
As litigators, the attorneys at Paul & Perkins utilize our intimate knowledge of the nursing home industry to pursue the best resolutions for our clients. We know how nursing homes work and how complex corporate structures are often used to unfairly shield those in control from liability. We do not allow the nursing home industry to get away with corporate “shell games.”
One of the primary problems with nursing homes is the grossly inadequate staffing levels, which places the front line nursing staff under undue pressure and in unfair working conditions. We perform extensive investigation into the corporate responsibility for staffing levels and direct our attentions toward uncovering what goes on behind the corporations’ closed doors. We begin with entry level employees and try to understand the pressures management places on them; oftentimes getting paid minimum wage, yet asked to perform amazingly difficult tasks without adequate staffing. We then work our way up the chain to discover the financial pressures management is placed under and what incentives drive their performance and decisions. As we continue to work up the corporate ladder, we often find the corporate headquarters turn a blind eye to the problems at their facilities, focusing strictly on dollars and cents, and putting profits ahead of people.
There are more than 700 nursing homes in the State of Florida. The vast majority are caring environments that provide competent care to our elderly citizens. However, if even one senior citizen suffers abuse or neglect due to understaffing, inadequate training, or deliberate cruelty, that is one too many.
