Plaintiffs’ lawyers gaining edge against nursing homes with staffing issues

Plaintiff attorneys looking to jam up nursing homes now have a plethora of data points on which to base their cases, thanks to the workforce crisis, legal experts said.

“The plaintiffs’ bar would argue – and a lot of times it was based upon fiction – that nursing homes were understaffed and that understaffing led to problems,” said Minton P. Mayer, an attorney with Quintairos Prieto Boyer and Wood, PA, in Memphis, TN. “Unfortunately, now they have some data in terms of real-world data that can support their claims and the model they’ve been using for years. The staffing dilemma, which is front and center … they can establish it through so many different data points right now.”

The staffing challenge is the biggest issue facing nursing homes, said Caroline J. Berdzik, chair of the Employment and Labor and Healthcare practice groups at Goldberg Segalla. The New York state staffing mandate has played out as a “true nightmare” as anticipated, she said.

“It’s really becoming impossible,” Berdzik said, adding that Payroll-Based Journal data in New York shows that 75% of the state’s 614 nursing homes cannot meet its 3.5-hour staffing mandate.