Tennessee Law Blog

This week the Tennessee nursing home industry pushed legislation to give them limited liability for the neglect of residents. It is amazing that the industry has the guts to ask for a special law created just to limit their liability when there has been record fines and citations of inadequate care this year. In fact, just this week the Tennessee Department of Health suspended new admissions of patients to Country Place Health Care Center in Crossville. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has also put in place temporary management at the facility

It seems that Tennessee Nursing Homes could limit their exposure to lawsuits by making sure homes like Country Place provide quality care. Doesn't this make more sense than trying to have a law passed that protects you from a lawsuit. I have never handled a nursing home negligence case that I believe could not have been avoided if the home had provided adequately trained and a sufficient number of staff. Maybe nursing homes could avoid more lawsuits if they spent more time caring for their patients and less time trying to obtain special protections from the legislature.