If you suspect that your mom or dad has been subjected to abuse or neglect in the nursing home, there are several things that you should do.

First of all, as soon as you suspect there’s a problem with the care your mom or dad is receiving, contact the Director of Nursing and tell him or her that hey, I don’t think my mom or dad is getting appropriate care.  Whether it comes to feeding, or hydration, or proper turning repositioning to prevent bedsores.  Tell the Director of Nursing about it so you can get on it quickly.  Remember this, the squeaky wheel always gets the grease, even in a nursing home facility.

If that doesn’t work, if the Director of Nursing approach doesn’t get you where you need to be with regard to quality of care of your loved one, then demand a care plan meeting.  At a care plan meeting that is suppose to be provided by statute, the Director of Nursing, the Administrator of the facility, and all the other disciplines at the facility will have a meeting.  It’ll be a roundtable meeting attended by you with regard to your mother or father.  You will voice your concerns, make your complaints.  And at that time the nursing home is suppose to put together a game plan for addressing your problems and your concerns with regard to your mom or dad.

In the event that that doesn’t work – after contacting the Director of Nursing, having a care plan meeting, and if you’re still not satisfied with the quality of care that your mom or dad is receiving, you can always contact several agencies that exist in the state of Florida.

First, you can contact the Department of Children and Families.  The number is 1-800-96-ABUSE.  Inform them that you believe that your mother has been subjected to abuse or neglect, and when you do that, the Department of Children and Families has investigators who are required by law to come out to the facility and investigate your complaint of abuse and neglect.

You should also contact the Agency for Healthcare Administration.  The Agency for Healthcare Administration is the entity in the state of Florida that oversees all of Florida’s nursing homes.  You can lodge a complaint investigation, and just like the Department of Children and Families, the Agency for Healthcare Administration must go out to the facility and perform their own investigation into your allegations of abuse or neglect.

There’s also an independent agency that’s independent of the department of elder affairs, and that entity is known as the Long-term Care Ombudsman.  Every locality throughout the state of Florida has a local Ombudsman, and you can find that number as well as these other numbers for the Agency for Healthcare Administration, and the Department of Children and Families in the blue pages in your phonebook.  That’s where you can find those numbers.

You contact those three entities, they’ll do an investigation, and hopefully they’ll get you the results that you need to make sure that you get back on track so that your mother or father starts getting good care again.

Those are some things that should be done.  When you find out there’s a problem get on it quickly and promptly, and stay on top of the facility because as we said earlier, the squeaky wheel gets the grease, and that certainly applies to the quality of care that your mother or father receives at a Florida nursing home.