Neglect in long-term care means failing to provide goods and services necessary to avoid physical harm, mental anguish, or emotional distress. It covers inadequate hygiene, nutrition, hydration, repositioning, supervision, and medical attention.
It is distinguished from abuse, which involves affirmative harmful conduct rather than omission.
Alternative Names:
Care Neglect, Failure to Provide Care
Why it Matters?
Neglect claims are proven almost entirely through the facility's own documentation, or its absence. Missing repositioning records, gaps in intake and output charting, and care plan interventions documented as ordered but never performed are the recurring evidence. The defense frequently turns on whether the resident's decline was clinically unavoidable given comorbidities, which requires the medical record to show that appropriate interventions were attempted and documented.
Frequently Confused with
Related terms
Frequently asked questions
How is neglect proven?
Is every decline in a resident's condition neglect?
