emergency room

Residents of Carlsbad who have an elderly loved one in a nursing home or assisted living facility nearby, or who are currently exploring facilities for a loved one, should know about the risks of elder mistreatment and nursing home abuse. Every year, organizations in California and throughout the country take steps to address the continuing high rates of elder abuse, yet seniors continue to suffer preventable injuries as a result of abuse and neglect.

At the start of 2019, two new elder mistreatment prevention initiatives aim to take different approaches to the problem. We want to discuss these new efforts to detect elder abuse in emergency departments.

Elder Abuse as a Social Justice Issue

If an elderly San Diego County resident who has sustained injuries as a result of nursing home abuse ends up in an emergency department, will he or she be properly diagnosed with injuries caused by elder abuse? According to a recent article in Psych Central, formal diagnoses of elder abuse are made in only one out of every 7,700 visits to emergency rooms across the country. This information comes from a new study conducted by researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of California San Diego, and Weil Cornell Medicine.

Given what we know about rates of elder neglect and nursing home abuse—a fact sheet from the National Council on Aging (NCOA) predicts that about 10% of all Americans aged 60 and older have been subject to some form of elder abuse—the notion that only about .01% of seniors who seek treatment in emergency departments are diagnosed with injuries caused by elder abuse seems startling. What else does this study teach us, and what can we do to help?

Majority of Elder Abuse Cases are Not Reported or Go Undiagnosed

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