Each year, one in three American senior citizens (65 and older) falls and about 30 percent of those falls require medical treatment that, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), costs more than $19 billion.

Common Causes of Nursing Home, Elder Falls

Elderly nursing home patients usually use canes, walkers, wheelchairs or staff assistance to walk or move about the facility. Responsible nursing homes take precautions to protect their patients by carefully assessing the likely risk of falling for each individual patient.

A few of the common causes of nursing home falls in the elderly:

• Dementia can interfere with a patient’s ability to see and avoid an obstacle while walking with a walker or cane.
• Patients with reduced mental capacity may wander off, become confused in unfamiliar surroundings, and fall.
• Bathroom transfers from a wheelchair to the toilet can easily cause a fall in the absence of thoughtful, concerned, and well-trained caregivers.

Nursing homes must be vigilant about keeping the facility free of dangerous conditions that might cause an elderly patient to slip or trip and fall. It is the nursing home’s job to recognize these risks and take reasonable measures to prevent patients from falling.

When an elderly person falls, the health risk is much greater than that of a younger, healthier person. The risk of broken bones, particularly a broken hip, is significantly increased for an elderly patient and it takes longer to heal. Sometimes such injuries require long hospitalizations that result in overall loss of physical and mental capacity.

Falls may result in injuries that cause:

• Loss of consciousness (head injury)
• Broken bones
• Muscle strain and sprain
• Scrapes
• Cuts
• Bruises
• Swelling
• Severe pain
• Infection

These injuries can often be hard to identify as being caused by a fall, and, absent appropriate medical care, mistaken or ignored as another type of pain.

If you think that an elderly loved one may have been injured due to falling in a nursing home, our experienced nursing home abuse attorneys and elder abuse lawyers can help you investigate your claim. Please fill out and submit the contact form on this page for a free and confidential case evaluation or call us toll-free at (888) 285-3333.