How Nursing Homes Avoid Pressure Sore Responsibility

How Nursing Homes Avoid Pressure Sore Responsibility

Pressure sores—alternatively known as decubitus ulcers, bedsores, or pressure injuries—are one of the most visible and harrowing indicators of nursing home neglect. These injuries occur when prolonged pressure on the skin, typically over bony prominences like the tailbone (sacrum), hips, or heels, restricts blood flow and causes the underlying tissue to die.

In the eyes of the law and the medical community, the development of a Stage 3 or Stage 4 pressure sore in a facility is considered a “never event.” This term describes a category of medical errors so egregious and preventable that they should never occur under a standard of proper care. Despite this, the nursing home industry has developed a sophisticated “playbook” of defenses designed to shift blame away from their own systemic failures and often onto the residents themselves or their condition.

The “Unavoidable” Defense: Misusing Federal Guidelines

The primary shield used by nursing homes is the claim that a pressure sore was “unavoidable.” This defense relies upon a narrow, often self-serving interpretation of federal regulation 42 C.F.R. § 483.25(b). Facilities frequently argue that because a resident was elderly, suffered from dementia, or had compromised circulation, skin breakdown was somehow inevitable rather than a failure of nursing.

However, federal “F-Tags”—the specific guidelines state and federal inspectors use to cite facilities—are remarkably clear. For a pressure sore to truly be deemed unavoidable, the facility must provide documented evidence of a rigorous four-step clinical process:

• Comprehensive Assessment: The facility must identify the resident’s specific risk factors immediately upon admission and whenever their clinical condition changes.
• Implementation of Interventions: They must prove they actually implemented and carried out a care plan that included appropriate pressure sore precautions, including pressure-relieving surfaces, a strict repositioning schedule (typically every two hours), and optimized moisture management among other interventions.
• Monitoring and Evaluation: Staff must monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of the interventions to ensure they are meeting the needs of the patient..
• Revision of Strategy: If early indications of skin breakdown become evident, the facility cannot simply continue the same failing care plan; they must immediately modify the care plan to make necessary changes, and consult a wound nurse or physician as may be necessary to escalate the level of intervention.

If the facility failed to document even one of these steps, the “unavoidable” defense is legally and medically invalid. Age and illness are risk factors that require increased care, not excuses for no care.

The Myth of the “Non-Compliant” Resident

When medical records cannot support the “unavoidable” defense, facilities often pivot to blaming the victim. Defense attorneys and nursing home administrators frequently claim that the resident “refused” to be turned or was “combative” during skin checks. This strategy is designed to make a jury or a family feel that the injury was the result of the resident’s own stubbornness.

This is a dangerous half-truth that ignores the facility’s legal duty of care. While residents have the right to refuse treatment, the facility’s responsibility does not end with a single “no.” Under federal law, if a resident is resistant to interventions such as repositioning, the facility is required to investigate the root cause. Often, a resident “refuses” because they are in pain, confused due to dementia, or depressed.  

In these instances, the facility is legally obligated to implement a care plan to address the hurdles that may be impeding the patient’s ability or desire to allow for the intervention, and educate the resident and their family on the specific risks of refusal—such as the risk of osteomyelitis (bone infection), sepsis, and death. They must offer alternative solutions, such as pain medication, different types of specialty cushions or more frequent but smaller shifts in position. Generic notes stating “resident refused care” are often a red flag for staff who were simply too overwhelmed to perform the turn and needed a way to account for the gap in the records.

The “Paper Wall”: Documentation Failures and Audit Trails

In many nursing home neglect cases, the medical record becomes a work of fiction. To avoid liability and potential lawsuits, facilities may engage in several deceptive documentation practices intended to hide the timeline of neglect. One of the most common issues we encounter is “cloned” or “copy-paste” charting within Electronic Health Records (EHR). We often see records where a resident’s skin is described with the exact same phrase—”warm, dry, and intact”—for weeks at a time, only for the resident to be rushed to the emergency room the next day with a Stage 4 ulcer that has progressed to the bone.

Modern litigation now allows us to look behind the “paper wall” by requesting the Audit Trail of the electronic medical record. This metadata reveals:

• Timing of Entries: Whether a nurse documented a “turn” at 2:00 AM while the audit trail shows they were actually logged into another patient’s chart across the building.
• Late Entries: If descriptions of “skin intact” were added days after the wound was actually discovered at a hospital.
• User Identity: Who actually made the entry, often revealing that administrative staff—not the bedside caregivers—were the ones “fixing” the charts after a resident was hospitalized.

Systemic Understaffing: The Corporate Root Cause

The most common reason for pressure sores is not a lack of medical knowledge among nurses, but a lack of staff on the floor. Proper skin care is labor-intensive; it requires two Certified Nursing Assistants (CNAs) to safely turn and reposition an immobile, high-risk resident every two hours, around the clock.

When private equity firms or large corporate chains purchase nursing homes, they often slash staffing levels to the absolute minimum to maximize profit margins. They may also use complex corporate “shell” structures to distance the parent company from the facility’s failures. This creates a “shadow” of neglect where CNAs are forced to care for 15, 20, or even 30 residents at once. In such an environment, manual turning is frequently the first task to be skipped because it leaves no immediate evidence of omission until a wound appears weeks later.

The Devastating Consequences of Neglect

A pressure sore is not just a “sore.” It is a catastrophic breakdown of the body’s largest organ. When these wounds are allowed to progress to Stage 3 or Stage 4, they create a portal for life-threatening complications. Residents with deep pressure injuries are at extreme risk for:

• Sepsis: A systemic, life-threatening immune response to an infection that can lead to organ failure.
• Osteomyelitis: An infection of the bone that often requires months of IV antibiotics or even surgical debridement.
• Necrotizing Fasciitis: A “flesh-eating” infection that spreads rapidly through the soft tissue.
• Severe Pain and Disfigurement: These wounds often require painful “debridement” procedures where a surgeon must cut away dead tissue without the use of general anesthesia due to the resident’s fragile health.

Strategic Steps for Families

If you discover that your loved one has developed a pressure sore, you must act decisively to counter the facility’s inevitable attempts to minimize the injury. 

1. Get information.  Begin by demanding full transparency from the nursing staff, specifically asking for the exact medical “stage” of the wound and requesting to see the wound care flow sheets and the facility’s internal staffing logs for the preceding shifts. 
2. Photograph the pressure wound(s).  It is vital to take your own high-resolution, dated photographs of the injury, as the facility’s internal photos are often insufficient and may not accurately capture the true depth or severity of the wound. 
3. Ensure Care.  Furthermore, you should insist on an immediate review of the resident’s nutritional and hydration status, as pressure sores cannot heal without adequate protein intake; any failure to involve a registered dietitian is a separate clinical omission. In cases involving Stage 3 or Stage 4 ulcers, families should not wait for the facility to act but should instead demand a transfer to a hospital or an external wound care specialist. 
4. Legal Consultation.  To protect the patient’s rights, seek legal consultation.  There are important deadlines that may apply to the case, and it is critical to ensure that evidence of patient neglect is preserved.

Contact Powless Law Firm

Nursing home corporations have teams of risk managers and high-priced lawyers dedicated to making these preventable injuries look like “natural causes.” You need an advocate who understands their tactics and knows how to pierce the “paper wall” of their documentation.

At Powless Law Firm, we work hard to uncover the truth behind nursing home neglect. We investigate the staffing levels, the corporate ownership structure, and the electronic audit trails of medical records to show exactly how the system failed your loved one. If your family is dealing with the aftermath of a severe pressure sore, contact us today at 877-769-5377 for a free, confidential case evaluation.

The Powless Law Firm is an Indiana law firm that represents victims and families statewide in serious cases involving nursing home neglect, birth injury, medical negligence, personal injury, and wrongful death. If you have concerns about nursing home negligence, please contact us at (877) 469-2864. Together, we can make a difference.

The Powless Law Firm represents families across Indiana—from Indianapolis to Fort Wayne and Evansville—in cases involving nursing home neglect, birth trauma lawsuits, medical malpractice injury claims. As experienced medical malpractice attorneys in Indiana, we are here to listen to your story and help you find the way forward.

Call (877) 469-2864 now for a free, confidential consultation. There is no fee unless we win your case.