In South Carolina, there are approximately 200 nursing homes and thousands of nursing home residents. When you hire one of these nursing homes, you want peace of mind knowing that your loved one is getting a higher quality of life than they could if they struggled on their own. Tragically, nursing home facilities don’t take care of their patients, and your family, as they should. In fact, each year a quarter of all nursing homes in the U.S. are responsible for causing a resident’s death or injury. That’s when you need the nursing home attorneys of Futeral & Nelson, LLC.

If you suspect that a nursing home in South Carolina has abused, mistreated, or neglected your loved one, then call our injury lawyers immediately for a free consultation. Our Charleston nursing home attorneys will work for you and your family to make the facility responsible for what they’ve done to your family member and to prevent the facility from victimizing others. We deal with abuse and neglect claims against facilities in Charleston, Dorchester, and Berkeley counties and throughout South Carolina.

Our South Carolina nursing home lawyers, Stephan Futeral and Thomas Nelson, have over 35 years of combined experience handling tough cases anywhere in the state. We’re top-rated (AV) by Martindale-Hubbell,  Stephan Futeral is rated 10 (Superb) by AVVO, Thomas Nelson is one of Super Lawyers Rising Stars, and clients endorse us with 5 stars ★★★★★ on Google Reviews.

South Carolina’s nursing home residents can suffer in a facility’s care either by intentional acts (physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse, and financial exploitation) or by sheer neglect:

1. Physical Abuse – The South Carolina Omnibus Adult Protection Act (OAPA) provides that physical abuse includes slapping, hitting, kicking, biting, choking, pinching, and burning. Physical abuse also includes using of drugs to “chemically restrain” a patient or nursing home resident.
2. Emotional Abuse – The OAPA defines emotional abuse as “deliberately subjecting a vulnerable adult to threats or harassment or other forms of intimidating behavior causing fear, humiliation, degradation, agitation, confusion, or other forms of emotional distress.”
3. Sexual Abuse – As awful as it sounds, some nursing home residents have been sexually abused by staff who has control over them. This type of abuse can include actual sex acts, forcing a resident to view pornography or other people’s sexual acts, or forcing the resident to undress for no legitimate purpose.
4. Financial Exploitation – Nursing home residents can easily fall prey to a malicious nursing home staff member who sees the resident as an easy target to exploit financially either by theft, manipulating them into giving away their money, health care fraud (charging for services that weren’t given), or by stealing their identity.
5. Neglect of Nursing Home Residents – In many cases, the nursing home patient isn’t intentionally abused. Instead, the patient suffers simply because the facility fails to: (a) give the resident proper hydration and nutrition; (b) assist with bathing, permits dirty clothing, or fails to change soiled bedding and linens; (c) administer medicines or treatment illnesses or injuries; or (d) reposition the patient to prevent the development of bed sores.

Many nursing home abuse claims in South Carolina aren’t reported because residents are unable or willing to speak up for themselves. It is very important that you be on a constant look-out for any signs of nursing home abuse or neglect.  Visit your family members often, visit them at different times so the home can’t figure out your schedule, and look for warning signs of abuse and neglect such as: