Nursing Home Abuse Lawyers Handling Wandering and Elopement Claims

What steps should a nursing home take to avoid wandering or elopement?

Individual care plans should be reviewed with families. The nursing home should have photos of each resident to readily identify them. There should be a plan to look in the places where a resident who has wandered off or eloped might hurt themselves the most like rooftops, roadways, and bodies of water.

There should also be a ready checklist of people and officials to contact including the management, relatives, the resident’s doctors, and law enforcement. The police may have specific alert systems for seniors who are lost or missing. A commonly used public alert system is the Silver Alert System.

Nursing homes can take numerous steps to avoid wandering or elopement – and should be held liable if their failure to take these steps causes harm to one of their residents. These steps include:

• Enclose the facility with fences, trees, or other ways to keep the residents on the premises.
• Understand which residents are most at risk for wandering or elopement.
• Physically guide residents who need help or might wander to their activities, the dining room, or other destinations.
• Have security personnel at the points where people enter and leave the facility.
• Install cameras, videos, and signaling systems to indicate when a resident might have wandered off.
• Educate the staff about the different ways to monitor nursing home residents who might wander or elope.
• Provide individual care plans for residents who are likely to wander.
• Ensure that each resident is socially engaged.
• Install locks on doors and windows.
• Be extra vigilant at night when residents might wake up in the middle of the night and become disoriented.

Generally, physical restraints should not be used to control the location of any residents. Restraints have severe psychological consequences. There are better strategies.