A Bradenton pressure ulcer lawyer, often called a bed sore lawyer, represents nursing home and assisted living residents and their families when a facility fails to prevent or properly treat pressure ulcers. Most bed sores are preventable with repositioning, skin checks, nutrition, and wound care, and serious ones can signal neglect.
Heintz Law represents nursing home and assisted living residents and their families in Bradenton, Palmetto, Lakewood Ranch, Manatee County, and the Suncoast. Founding Partner Steven E. Heintz and our Bradenton bed sore attorneys handle these claims as part of the firm's nursing home abuse lawyer practice.
Have our 30 years of experience in personal injury go to work for you. No fees or costs unless we get results.
☎ Call NowIf your loved one has a bed sore, ask the facility immediately for the wound's stage, size, and treatment plan, and ask that the physician and a wound care nurse evaluate it. Photograph the wound with a date, write down what staff tell you, and request the resident's skin and wound records in writing.
The date a wound was first documented, and how fast it worsened, often become central questions later. Early photographs and records help answer them.
A bed sore, also called a pressure ulcer or pressure injury, is damage to the skin and underlying tissue caused by prolonged pressure, or pressure combined with shear. Bed sores usually form over bony areas such as the tailbone, hips, heels, ankles, elbows, shoulder blades, and the back of the head.
Residents who cannot change position on their own, who are incontinent, who are poorly nourished, or who have diabetes or circulation problems are at higher risk. Medical devices such as oxygen tubing, splints, and casts can also cause pressure injuries where they press against the skin.
The National Pressure Injury Advisory Panel classifies bed sores into Stage 1 through Stage 4 by depth, plus unstageable wounds, where dead tissue hides the depth, and deep tissue pressure injuries, which appear as persistent deep red, maroon, or purple discoloration that can quickly open into a deeper wound.
Stage 3, Stage 4, and unstageable wounds usually take weeks or months to heal, if they heal at all, and they carry a serious risk of bone infection and sepsis. A wound described as unstageable is not a minor wound. It means the damage is deep enough that dead tissue is covering it.
Bed sores are often a sign of neglect, especially when they develop after admission, reach Stage 3 or Stage 4, appear in more than one place, or are found by family or a hospital rather than facility staff. Federal standards require nursing homes to prevent pressure ulcers unless a resident's condition made them clinically unavoidable.
Federal care standards for facilities that accept Medicare or Medicaid say a resident who enters without pressure ulcers should not develop them unless the resident's clinical condition shows they were unavoidable, and a resident with pressure ulcers should receive the treatment needed to promote healing and prevent infection and new sores. Facilities sometimes argue a wound was unavoidable. That question usually turns on whether the facility assessed the risk and actually carried out a prevention plan.
Our Florida nursing home neglect lawyer page explains other forms of neglect that often appear alongside bed sores.
A facility should assess each resident's pressure injury risk at admission and as conditions change, then follow a written prevention plan. That plan typically includes regular repositioning, daily skin checks, pressure-relieving mattresses and cushions, incontinence care, nutrition and hydration support, and prompt treatment of any early skin change.
Understaffing undermines every one of these steps. Florida requires nursing homes to provide, at a minimum, a weekly average of 3.6 hours of direct care per resident per day, including at least 2.0 hours from certified nursing assistants, but residents at high risk for bed sores often need more help than the minimum provides.
Serious bed sores can cause severe pain, cellulitis, bone infection, sepsis, the need for surgical debridement or flap surgery, amputation in some cases, extended hospital stays, loss of mobility, and death. Older adults with deep wounds are especially vulnerable to infection spreading through the body.
Our assisted living infections lawyer page covers infections and sepsis in long-term care in more detail.
Yes. Under Florida law, a resident, the resident's guardian, or the personal representative of a deceased resident's estate can sue a nursing home or assisted living facility for negligence or for violating residents' rights when a bed sore was caused or worsened by inadequate care. The family must prove the failure caused the harm.
Florida residents' rights laws guarantee adequate and appropriate health care and freedom from neglect. A violation of those rights or of state and federal care standards is evidence of negligence. Nursing home and assisted living claims are separate from medical malpractice claims and have their own pre-suit procedures.
Under Florida law, a nursing home bed sore claim may be brought against the licensed facility, its management or consulting company, its managing employees, and direct caregivers. Claims against other individuals or companies, such as owners or parent companies, require the court's permission after a showing of evidence.
Florida law limits a nursing home's responsibility for a physician's own medical negligence, but not for its nursing staff's failure to observe, assess, plan, and carry out care. Most bed sore cases center on that nursing care.
Important evidence includes admission skin assessments, pressure injury risk scores, care plans, turning and repositioning logs, wound measurements and photographs, weight and meal records, physician orders, staffing schedules, hospital wound documentation, and state inspection reports. Together they show when the wound began and how the facility responded.
Contradictions in the records are common. A chart showing turns every two hours, next to a hospital note of a Stage 4 wound days later, raises real questions. The outside professionals we retain, such as wound care physicians, certified wound care nurses, and geriatric nurses, can explain how long a wound of that size and depth takes to develop.
Before filing a nursing home or assisted living lawsuit in Florida, the family must send written notice by certified mail to each prospective defendant describing the rights violated, the negligence alleged, and the injuries, with a certification from counsel that a reasonable investigation supports the claim. No suit may be filed for 75 days after notice.
During the 75 days, the facility and its insurer must evaluate the claim and either reject it or make an offer, and the parties may exchange records informally. The filing deadline is paused during this period, and the parties must attend mediation within 30 days of the facility's response.
In Florida, a nursing home or assisted living claim generally must be brought within two years of the incident or within two years of when it was or should have been discovered, but no later than four years after the incident. If the facility concealed the harm, the period may be extended, up to six years after the incident.
Bed sores develop over time, so the starting date of the deadline is not always obvious. Because the pre-suit notice must be served within the deadline, families should not wait.
A resident or the resident's estate may recover medical expenses for wound care, surgery, and hospitalization, the cost of moving to a safer facility or arranging more care, and damages for pain and suffering, mental anguish, and loss of dignity and enjoyment of life. Punitive damages may be available in limited cases.
Factors that affect the value of a bed sore claim include the wound's stage and number, the length and intensity of treatment, infection or surgery, how clearly the records show missed care, and how well the case is prepared for trial.
When a bed sore contributes to a resident's death, often through infection or sepsis, Florida's nursing home and assisted living laws allow the personal representative to choose, after the verdict, between survival damages for the resident's own pain and suffering and wrongful death damages for the family's losses.
Nursing home claims are not treated as medical malpractice claims, and Florida's rule limiting recovery by adult children in medical negligence deaths does not apply to claims alleging the death of a nursing home resident under the nursing home law. Our wrongful death page explains Florida's wrongful death rules.
Often, yes. The same staffing and care failures that allow bed sores to form also lead to dehydration, weight loss, infections, and falls. A resident who is not being turned is often also not being helped to eat, drink, use the bathroom, or walk safely.
Our nursing home slip and fall lawyer and nursing home elopement lawyer pages cover related harm from supervision failures.
Our Bradenton bed sore attorneys handle each case in stages, from first contact through records review, pre-suit notice, the 75-day evaluation period, mediation, lawsuit, discovery, trial, and appeal. Every file is prepared from the start as if a jury will hear it, because the facility's view of trial risk shapes how it values the claim.
Steven E. Heintz is the Founding Partner of Heintz Law, a Bradenton firm that represents only injured people and their families. His approach is careful preparation, aggressive advocacy where the facts call for it, and trial readiness from the first conference. Settlement on the right number is welcome. Settlement that shortchanges a family is not.
Bed sore and pressure ulcer cases are handled on a contingency fee, so there is no fee unless there is a recovery.
If your loved one developed a serious bed sore in a nursing home or assisted living facility in Bradenton, Palmetto, Lakewood Ranch, or anywhere in Manatee County or the surrounding counties, Heintz Law can review the records, explain the pre-suit process, and protect your family's rights under Florida law.
Have our 30 years of experience in personal injury go to work for you. No fees or costs unless we get results.
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