It is important for staff workers at nursing homes and assisted living centers to respond quickly when residents signal that they need assistance. This is often done with a button or a pull cord in the resident’s room. They may need assistance for a variety of reasons, as extreme as a fall or a poor reaction to medication and as simple as needing help getting food or taking a shower.
In general, it’s important for these response times to be under five minutes. Delays can be highly detrimental to elderly individuals. So what do the response times actually look like?
An average of eight minutes
According to one study, the average is around eight minutes. This means that it does take slightly longer than expected for staff members to respond.
The study did note that the top 10% of nursing homes in the study had a much better response time, with an average right around two minutes. So there are certainly facilities where responses are optimized and people are getting the care that they need.
But this is also slightly concerning. Because the average is eight minutes, if some facilities are responding in two minutes or less, this means that there are also many facilities on the other end of the spectrum. Residents may not get a response for 10 or 15 minutes after they signal. This could be very dangerous, especially if someone has suffered an injury in a fall or something of this nature, where a delay in response time could lead to serious injuries or even a fatal accident.
If you believe that your loved one has suffered harm because the nursing home was negligent and didn’t respond quickly, then you need to know exactly what legal options you have at this time.
