Making the decision to place a parent or a loved one in a nursing home is never easy. While you or other family members might have done your best to keep them at home, the care that many elderly or chronically ill patients require is outside the scope of what most people are capable of. The care, treatment, and supervision provided by nursing homes might be exactly what your loved one needed.

You did your best when you went through the process of selecting a facility, perhaps going on tours, reading reviews from other families, and reviewing Medicare ratings. Unfortunately, it is not always easy to glean what is actually going on inside of a nursing home. Regular supervision is an absolute necessity to keep residents safe, and any lack thereof can be considered neglect if someone is injured.

Last summer in July 2021, two Pennsylvania children, ages six and eight, were involved in a fire caused by improperly discarded fireworks in York County. One child was killed, and the other suffered severe burn injuries. This was, unfortunately, not an isolated incident. It’s estimated that close to 10,000 firework injuries occur each year across the country.

Even worse, this number seems to be rising. It was reported that the number of firework-related deaths and injuries rose 50% from 2019 to 2020. The majority of these incidents occurred in July, close to the July 4^th holiday. The cancellation of many public fireworks displays for reasons related to COVID-19 was cited as a factor contributing to the rise in home firework accidents.

Almost every motorist has found themselves, at one time or another, driving down the road, minding their business, when they suddenly encounter another driver in an adjacent lane wanting to merge in front of them. 

It can be stressful not knowing how to handle the situation. You may wonder if you should slow down, change lanes yourself, or something else. A motorist looking to change lanes is also likely a bit tense, wondering if they have enough time and space to merge in safely. Situations like these may cause drivers to do something unsafe, including cutting off a fellow motorist or making an unsafe lane change.

When you start experiencing unexplained symptoms, pain, or health concerns, your first stop may be your primary care physician. You trust your doctor to listen to your concerns and, when necessary, to send you for testing or to see a specialist. Many specialists have their own tests they like to run when meeting with new or established patients, as well. 

Test results are often an essential component of correctly diagnosing a disease or illness. When your doctor misreads your test results, you could be at risk for additional harm in the form of unnecessary disease progression, co-morbidities, and additional medical harm that may constitute medical malpractice. 

Truck-involved collisions often have more devastating results compared to car-on-car ones. It’s common for crashes between passenger cars and tractor-trailers to leave behind significant physical damage to the sedan or sports utility vehicle (SUV) involved and for these types of collisions to leave the non-commercial automobiles’ occupants with debilitating injuries or dead. 

The catastrophic nature of truck-involved collisions often leaves passenger car occupants wondering what rights to compensation they have. Perhaps the best way to make sense of how much of a truck accident settlement you might be entitled to in your case is to learn about the different factors that go into determining demands you or your attorney may make and the offers insurers may extend in kind. 

Philadelphia, PA— June 13, 2022 —Shrager & Sachs is proud to announce that founding partner, Robert L. Sachs, Jr., has been appointed by Order of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court as a member of the Pennsylvania Board of Law Examiners. The Board of Law Examiners is one of several court-appointed boards which assist the court in carrying out the regulation of the practice of law in Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania Board of Law Examiners oversees the admission of lawyers to the Pennsylvania bar and administers the bar examination for lawyers entering the profession.

The Board recommends the admission of persons to the bar and the practice of law in the Commonwealth. It also recommends rules pertaining to bar admission and practice. It administers the bar examination for lawyers entering the profession. The Board consists of seven members of the Pennsylvania bar who are eligible to serve a maximum of two three-year terms. It is comprised of lawyers and judges who reside and work throughout the state.

Rob Sachs is the principal of the Philadelphia plaintiff’s complex personal injury firm, Shrager & Sachs. His practice focuses on medical malpractice, nursing home negligence, and other catastrophic personal injury matters. Sachs has previously served on the Board of the Philadelphia Trial Lawyers Association, the Pennsylvania Association for Justice, and was elected by his statewide colleagues to serve as Governor to the American Association for Justice. He also previously served on the Board of Public Justice Foundation.

When you and your family make the difficult decision that a nursing home is the best place to give your loved one the care they need, you trust that you will be kept involved. You know that your family member’s health condition can change at any time. One of the reasons your loved one moved into a long-term care facility is so that their pressing health needs could be addressed on a daily basis by trained professionals.

You expect that if your family member’s condition changes in any way, you will be notified immediately. If your relative falls and breaks a bone, suffers a heart attack, or develops a viral infection, you naturally assume that staff members will contact you as soon as possible. But what if they don’t?

Motor vehicle accidents can happen in the blink of an eye. Before you even fully realize what is going on, the entire ordeal might already be over. However, everything can change in that short period of time. Your vehicle might be seriously or even irreparably damaged, and you might have suffered debilitating injuries that limit your daily life and leave you with hefty medical bills.

The decision to put a family member in a nursing home is a painstaking one for many families. They worry about their incapacitated or elderly loved ones feeling abandoned by them. They also worry about the quality of care they’re going to receive at these facilities’ hands, especially given the high resident-to-staff ratios.

Many families will spend significant time researching then visiting these facilities before ultimately deciding to commit to a particular nursing or assisted living facility. They do that to minimize the chances of their loved one experiencing health declines, such as contracting an infection.

There are some infections that nursing home residents have to worry about contracting more than others. A discussion of these and how they may shed light on abuse or neglect that’s happening at your loved one’s facility will be unpacked below.

After months of cold temperatures, snow, and ice, the resurgence of warm weather in spring often comes as a relief. This season is marked by wildflowers and greenery, as well as more and more sightings of Pennsylvania’s wide array of wildlife.

All these signs of spring can be a welcoming indication that the long winter months are soon to be far behind. Longer days with more hours of sunlight are not necessarily a guarantee that you will be safer behind the wheel, though. While driving is certainly safer during daylight hours, as wildlife becomes more active, they can create additional daytime driving hazards.

If you’re worried about spring wildlife collisions, Shrager & Sachs has compiled their best tips for avoiding crashes when there are animals on the road.