What It Takes To Make a Successful Nursing Home Neglect or Abuse Case in Iowa
A successful nursing home negligence case is one that results in sending a message to the nursing home industry that the elderly in Iowa deserve dignity and good care. Proving such a case usually requires testimony from a qualified nursing home expert who can honestly state that the nursing home committed abuse, neglect, or otherwise violated the standard of care.
While there are often errors in the nursing home chart, a family member may also need to have a good memory or record of the neglect. This information can then be evaluated by the appropriate expert. This expert may be a nurse, doctor, or a nursing home administrator. Some cases require all three types of experts.
Finding the appropriate nursing home expert is often challenging. First, you need to find an expert who is qualified. Second, out of that pool of qualified experts, you have to find one who is willing to take time out of his or her busy profession to analyze and ultimately criticize the work of someone else in that pool. Third, out of the experts who are both qualified and willing to analyze and criticize, you need to find one who is brave enough to make his or her criticisms public by making them in writing and under oath. As you can probably imagine, this is a difficult person to find – particularly in a state as small as Iowa.
Many nursing home corporations know each other well. Some of the administrators may have gone to the same schools, belong to the same organizations, or may have even worked for the same nursing home corporation. For these reasons, Iowa experts are rarely willing to testify against other Iowa nursing homes in nursing home negligence cases.
Finding a qualified expert to testify is often the most challenging part of any nursing home case. Without contacts with medical experts around the country and enough expertise to gather the right records and ask the right questions, it can be very difficult to get the necessary expert testimony to get a nursing home neglect case to court.
Most experienced Iowa attorneys do not even file a nursing home case unless they already have consulted with a qualified expert. Injured nursing home residents or their families will rarely be successful in Iowa courts without qualified expert testimony identifying the applicable standards, laws, and areas of neglect. Finding that expert testimony often starts by finding the right nursing home abuse attorney for your case.
To find out other information you need to find the right Iowa nursing home attorney for your case, use the form to the right to download the entire The Law Guide to Iowa Nursing Home Abuse Claims.
