Throughout the United States, millions of elderly and disabled individuals receive care in nursing homes and care facilities. These facilities are supposed to provide patients with the compassionate and accurate medical care they need. Unfortunately, even the best nursing homes can face complaints of negligence or even abuse. But in worst cases, nursing homes attention to profitability over care can result in intentional acts resulting in injurious harm.

As a form of Personal Injury law, Nursing Home cases can involve negligence or abuse, which must be shown to be either intentional, if not malicious, or a lack of action via negligence for its patients. A right to safety is the bare minimum value that a resident is entitled to at any care facility, and Nursing Home or other Care Facilities must be held liable for any injury caused to the patients and residents under their care. Both federal and state laws protect nursing home residents in South Carolina. South Carolina Code of Laws Title 16 §16-3-1050 makes it a crime for certain persons to abuse or fail to report abuse, neglect, or exploitation of a nursing home resident, or to interfere with the investigation of a report of abuse, neglect, or exploitation.

Nursing Home abuse occurs when residents of long-term care facilities suffer physical, emotional, or psychological harm because of the negligent or intentional acts of their caregivers. The National Center on Elder Abuse distinguishes between seven different types of elder abuse. These include physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, financial/material exploitation, neglect, abandonment, and self-neglect.

Under 42 CFR § 483.12, nursing home residents have the right to be free from abuse, neglect, misappropriation of resident property, and exploitation. This includes but is not limited to freedom from corporal punishment, involuntary seclusion and any physical or chemical restraint not required to treat the resident’s medical symptoms. use verbal, mental, sexual, or physical abuse, corporal punishment, or involuntary seclusion. Physical abuse can also include overmedication and sedation.

“Abuse,” is defined in 42 CFR §483.5 as “the willful infliction of injury, unreasonable confinement, intimidation, or punishment with resulting physical harm, pain, or mental anguish. Abuse also includes the deprivation by an individual, including a caretaker, of goods or services that are necessary to attain or maintain physical, mental, and psychosocial well-being. Instances of abuse of all residents, irrespective of any mental or physical condition, cause physical harm, pain, or mental anguish. It includes verbal abuse, sexual abuse, physical abuse, and mental abuse including abuse facilitated or enabled using technology.”