Class Action Against Bay Park Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation Says Alleged Understaffing Behind ‘Unsafe, Inadequate’ Care

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A proposed class action lawsuit has been filed against Bay Park Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation and its owners and operators by a New York man who claims he and other residents of the Bronx nursing home have been victimized by unsafe and inadequate care stemming from insufficient staffing.

The lawsuit, filed in state supreme court in November 2018 and since removed to New York’s Southern District, claims the defendants have “betrayed and continue to betray” the trust of elderly and infirm patients in their care by failing to sufficiently staff the 480-bed facility. As a result of the understaffing, the lawsuit says, the defendants regularly fail to “change patient bandages, clean their wounds, or send patients to their specialist appointments,” as well as leave others “attached to empty IVs,” which the plaintiff says has caused some patients to pass out on the floor and/or contract life-threatening infections.

From the complaint:

“Defendants have subjected Plaintiff and the Class to indignities and other harms that directly resulted and continue to result from inadequate nurse staffing levels at the Facility, including but not limited to: no response or long response times to call lights; failure to provide adequate showers; lack of assistance with grooming and bathing; medications not being received on time; inadequate attention to toileting needs requiring Plaintiff and the Class to remain in their own urine and fecal matter for extended periods of time; and being confined to their beds without removal for long periods. Indeed, Plaintiff has found no nurses or doctors present on the floor for hours at a time or indeed for an entire evening.”

Per the plaintiff, the case describes one situation in which the defendants allegedly failed to change a bandage on his foot, and often left him to change the bandage himself. The lawsuit blames the alleged understaffing as the reason why the plaintiff’s wound “became infected multiple times” before he ultimately contracted a staph infection upon his readmittance to the facility.