Boston Accident Lawyer Blog

As readers of this blog and family members who have loved ones in nursing homes and long term care facilities know all too well, for nearly the past six months, family members have been unable to visit their loved ones, due to Covid-19 restrictions.  This has caused heartache and anxiety that people who have been spared the pain of placing a loved one in a nursing facility, can never fully understand.  Try to imagine that your mother or father, a grandparent, an aunt or uncle or someone close to you, is literally locked in a nursing home or long term care facility for months — places that are too often notorious for poor patient care – and you aren’t allowed inside to visit your loved one and verify his or her condition or care.

Such has been the plight of families with loved ones in Massachusetts nursing homes, “skilled nursing facilities”, long term care facilities, and rehabilitation hospitals.  Aside from family members, just try to imagine the fear and despondency of patients and residents themselves, many of whom suffer from Alzheimer’s Disease or cognitive decline.   As a Massachusetts nursing home neglect lawyer, I’ve seen these awful situations far too often, even under “normal” circumstances.   The past six months with Covid-19 has been intolerable, for everyone involved.

Gladly, the federal agency that oversees such regulations for nursing facilities and rehabilitation hospitals, the  Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), just released a directive substantially reducing those restrictions.

Readers of my blog know of my devotion to protecting the legal rights and the health & dignity of nursing home patients, “memory care” patients, as well as hospital and rehabilitation center patients.  These people are the elders who raised us, and they are now among the most vulnerable and often forgotten in society.  While I been practicing in this sub-specialty and writing about these issues for several years, I’ve recently published a series of accelerated publications on this topic, in the wake of COVID-19.  Unfortunately, in today’s post, I have some troubling news to report.

At the behest (more accurately, pressure) of the Massachusetts nursing home industry and its related healthcare partners, the Baker administration recently passed & signed special legislation providing for legal immunity against the nursing home industry and hospitals, for injuries to patients occurring during the COVID-19 problem.  The effective date of the liability immunity providing to health care organizations in the act, is retroactive to March 10, 2020.  The text of this new law can be found by clicking here.

This legislation has profound and very troubling consequences for the care, the safety and the health of nursing home patients in this state.  Legally, under normal circumstances, if a patient in a Massachusetts nursing home, rehabilitation center or hospital suffered injuries due to negligence on the part of a staff member of the provider, that provider could be held liable for resulting damages, especially pain and suffering.  The plaintiff in such a circumstance (which would be either a guardian, a health care proxy, or the patient him or her self), would first need to demonstrate that a relevant “standard of care” had been breached by the nursing home or other defendant, in order to recover damages.  That “standard of care” is normally deemed to have been violated if the plaintiff can demonstrate that the actions or inactions involved in the matter, constituted what is called “ordinary negligence.”  This is a standard of evidence that can sometimes be legally challenging, but is typically not a bar to legal recovery.

We hope that you’ve been dealing as well as you can with all the frustration from what can only be described as this awful situation with COVID-19, and that our previous posts on this subject have been of help to you.

Predictably, a number of Massachusetts nursing homes and rehabilitation facilities have been reported to exhibit troubling rates of COVID-19 infection, and possible violations of state and federally imposed health, safety and infection control protocols, the Massachusetts Department of Public Health/DPH recently reported.

The average age of people who have died of COVID-19 in the facilities reported is 81. The death rate of those 80 and older is 393 per 100,000, which is more than four times as high as the next highest age group.

The coronavirus epidemic has caused heartache enough for people who have been infected or lost loved ones due to the infection.  And while everyone is (for the most part) understandably taking measures to protect themselves and safeguard their own health, who is protecting our seniors and the frail in Massachusetts nursing homes?  Is the thinking for many people who don’t have a loved one in a nursing home, “That’s not my problem?”

If this viral epidemic has exposed anything, it’s exposed how few Massachusetts nursing homes regularly take measures necessary to prevent the development or spread of viruses and bacteria in their facilities.  As a Massachusetts nursing home neglect lawyer, I can assure my readers:  It’s a fact that most nursing homes and “skilled nursing facilities” are filled with viruses and infectious diseases.  Don’t be fooled by what you can see in these facilities, with the naked eye.  It’s also what you can’t see that threatens patient health & safety:  Viruses and bacteria.  To keep these infectious diseases at bay requires diligent effort and attention to proper disinfection procedures, methods, procedural systems and algorithms.  And the Coronavirus epidemic has exposed this (literally) dirty little secret:  That as many as two-thirds of nursing homes in Massachusetts were cited a minimum of once in the past three years for deficiencies in infection control.

Massachusetts law requires nursing homes, rehabilitation centers, “skilled nursing facilities”, assisted living facilities as well as businesses not related to health care, to undertake prudent measures to to reduce the risk of spreading the Coronavirus as well as other infectious diseases.  Among these measures are strict disinfection protocols, as well as constant monitoring of any employee or patient who has exhibited symptoms of the virus, such as fever, dry cough or muscle aches and pains.  Once such a potentially infected person has been identified, an investigatory process known as “contact tracing” must be immediately implemented.  This involves re-tracing that person’s contact with other individuals, to warn those individuals that they may have been infected with the virus, and taking reasonable measures to remove that person from the facility’s population.