Case Story: Attorney Shares Insight on Dehydration Case

In the state of California, one of the definitions of neglect, including neglect in a nursing home, is when a resident becomes malnourished and dehydrated. That doesn’t mean that every person in a nursing home who is malnourished and dehydrated has been neglected or that there’s a lawsuit.
But if your loved one goes to the hospital and you’re told that they’re dehydrated and malnourished, that gets my attention. I want to get those hospital records and I want to see what those hospital records say. I also want to get the nursing home records and find out why they are so malnourished and dehydrated.

The Code of Federal Regulations 42 CFR Section 483.25 deals with the quality of care for residents and nursing homes. Subsection G states assisted nutrition and hydration. It states that based on a resident’s comprehensive assessment, the facility must ensure that a resident is offered sufficient fluid intake to maintain proper hydration and health. So a caller calls our office and says, mom went to the hospital from a nursing home severely dehydrated. Then I want to get those nursing home records and I want to find out why. Were they monitoring mom’s intake and output? Were they offering her fluids? Was there any documentation that they were checking her skin for possible signs and symptoms of dehydration? I also want to talk to the family and find out when you go to the nursing home, is mom begging for water? Do you see that the water has been refilled? Do you see that the water isn’t within reach? We had a case one time where the family called us and said, you know, dad’s in the hospital. He was so dehydrated that he was a renal failure. So we got the records and we found out they were supposed to be monitoring his intake and output, including liquids.

They were not doing that. So it was no surprise that their failure to monitor his intake and output resulted in their father becoming severely dehydrated. I can tell you, I remember that case very well because it was a very nice family and when we filed the case, the defense attorney and the adjuster called me and said, we really don’t see the liability here. Probably about a year later, they wrote my client a very large check because we did discovery and we took depositions and we showed the liability on the part of the facility. I will never forget that case because that man was able to go home and have nursing assistants at home and he didn’t have to live in a facility for the rest of his life. If you suspect that you loved one suffering from malnutrition or dehydration after spending time at a nursing home or assisted living in the state of California, I’m interested in talking to you.