Nationwide Nursing Home & Abuse Lawyers
Dedicated legal advocates protecting your loved ones nationwide. When nursing homes break their promise of care, our experienced attorneys fight for the justice your family deserves.
Last updated: May 2026
Infections are common in nursing homes. Elderly residents often have weakened immune systems, chronic conditions, and limited mobility — all of which increase infection risk.
But common does not mean unavoidable. Many nursing home infections are preventable. And many that do occur become serious — or fatal — because a facility failed to recognize symptoms early, notify a physician promptly, or follow through on treatment.
When a nursing home resident develops a serious infection and the care provided fell below the required standard, the family may have a legal claim.
Sepsis is the body’s life-threatening response to an infection. In nursing homes, it most often originates from:
Sepsis progresses rapidly. A resident who appears mildly ill in the morning can be in septic shock by evening. Early recognition and treatment is critical. When a facility’s staff fails to identify warning signs, delays notifying the physician, or does not act on physician orders, the consequences can be permanent injury or death.
Sepsis is the leading cause of death in U.S. hospitals. It is also one of the most commonly cited complications in nursing home neglect cases.
UTIs are among the most frequent infections in nursing home residents — particularly women and residents using urinary catheters. They are highly treatable when caught early.
The concern in nursing home cases is twofold:
First, facilities sometimes fail to recognize UTI symptoms in residents who cannot clearly communicate discomfort — especially those with dementia or cognitive decline. Behavioral changes like confusion, agitation, or sudden functional decline may be the only signs of a UTI in a cognitively impaired resident.
Second, some facilities overuse antibiotics for UTIs, contributing to antibiotic-resistant infections that are far more difficult to treat.
When a UTI progresses to a kidney infection, enters the bloodstream, or contributes to sepsis, a manageable condition has become a serious medical crisis — one that may reflect a failure of basic care.
Pneumonia — particularly aspiration pneumonia — is a leading cause of hospitalization and death in nursing home residents. Aspiration pneumonia occurs when food, liquid, or oral bacteria is inhaled into the lungs, often during eating or sleeping.
Risk factors include: impaired swallowing (dysphagia), improper positioning during feeding, failure to follow speech therapy dietary recommendations, and poor oral hygiene. When a facility fails to manage these risk factors and a resident develops pneumonia, that may constitute negligence.
Open wounds — including surgical wounds, diabetic ulcers, and pressure injuries — are vulnerable to infection in nursing home settings. Proper wound care requires regular assessment, sterile technique, appropriate dressings, and prompt escalation when a wound shows signs of infection. When these steps are skipped or delayed, infection can spread rapidly to surrounding tissue or the bloodstream.
Clostridium difficile is a bacterium that causes severe diarrhea and intestinal inflammation. It spreads easily in healthcare settings and can be life-threatening in elderly patients. Facilities are required to implement infection control protocols — including proper hand hygiene, isolation of infected residents, and environmental cleaning. Outbreaks that harm multiple residents may indicate systemic failures in a facility’s infection control program.
Families should be concerned if:
Federal regulations require nursing homes to implement and maintain an infection prevention and control program. This includes:
Beyond regulatory requirements, the standard of care requires nurses to recognize infection symptoms, respond to changes in resident condition, communicate findings to physicians, and carry out ordered treatment. Failures at any of these steps — particularly when a resident is seriously harmed — may constitute negligence.
The signs of sepsis can be subtle in elderly residents. Common indicators include:
In a nursing home setting, staff should be trained to recognize these signs and respond immediately. A delay of even a few hours in treating sepsis can mean the difference between recovery and death.
If your loved one was transferred to a hospital in septic shock and no one at the nursing home had communicated concern to you prior to that transfer, that is a significant red flag.
1. Request complete medical records immediately. Ask for all nursing notes, vital sign documentation, physician communication records, medication administration records (MARs), and any incident reports from the period in question.
2. Request infection surveillance records. Nursing homes are required to track infection data. Ask whether the facility had any active infection outbreaks during the relevant period.
3. Document the timeline. Write down when symptoms first appeared, what staff told you, when the physician was notified, when the resident was hospitalized, and what the hospital found on admission.
4. Do not accept generic explanations. “She was just very sick” or “This is common at his age” may or may not be accurate. You have the right to a complete explanation of what happened.
5. Contact a nursing home neglect lawyer. If your loved one developed a serious infection that led to hospitalization, permanent injury, or death — and there is any reason to believe the facility failed to act appropriately — a legal review is warranted.
Infection cases with the strongest legal merit typically involve:
Not every infection is the basis for a legal claim. The question is whether the facility’s care fell below the required standard and whether that failure caused serious harm.
We handle nursing home infection and sepsis cases in Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, and Georgia. These cases require understanding of both the medical progression of infection and the regulatory standards nursing homes are required to meet. We know how facilities defend these claims — and we know what the medical records need to show.
There is no fee unless we recover for you. The consultation is free.
Not automatically. But when sepsis develops from a condition that should have been caught earlier — like a bedsore that progressed because it was not properly treated, or a UTI that was not recognized because symptoms were dismissed — the underlying neglect may have directly caused the sepsis. The question is whether the facility’s care met the required standard.
Both involve infections that develop during a healthcare stay rather than being present on admission. Nursing home-acquired infections are subject to the same regulatory scrutiny as hospital-acquired infections. Facilities are required to track, report, and work to prevent them.
Possibly. If a resident showed signs of a UTI — particularly behavioral changes in a cognitively impaired resident — and staff failed to recognize those signs, notify a physician, or obtain appropriate diagnostic testing, that failure may constitute negligence, particularly if the UTI progressed to a kidney infection, urosepsis, or septic shock.
Yes. The fact that the death occurred in a hospital does not eliminate the nursing home’s potential liability if the nursing home’s neglect caused or contributed to the condition that led to the hospitalization and death.
Statutes of limitations vary by state. Tennessee and Kentucky generally require claims to be filed within one year of the injury or death. Illinois and Georgia have different deadlines. Do not wait — medical records, witness memories, and staffing records can all be lost over time.
Nursing notes, vital sign documentation, physician communication records, and medication administration records are critical. These records should show when symptoms were first observed, when the physician was notified, and what steps were taken. Gaps in documentation, delays in notification, or a pattern of under-reporting symptoms are all significant.
We handle these cases on a contingency fee basis. There is no upfront cost, and no fee unless we recover compensation for you.
Dedicated legal advocates protecting your loved ones nationwide. When nursing homes break their promise of care, our experienced attorneys fight for the justice your family deserves.