When it comes to assisted living insurance, Professional liability is NOT the same as General Liability. Professional liability covers mistakes made in regards to the services you perform for your clients. For nursing homes, it will cover medical incidents, also including the dispensing of food and beverages. Here are a few claims that Professional Liability will cover when added to your assisted living insurance policies.

Medication Errors

Nurses at assisted living facilities and nursing homes usually have multiple patients that they care for daily. Each patient will more than likely need different medications at different dosages. If the wrong medicine or wrong dosage is given to a patient, the results can be disastrous.

Unfortunately these mistakes happen daily. Recently a staff member at a nursing home mistakenly gave an Alzheimer’s patient drugs for her central nervous system and heart. This caused her blood pressure to drop, and the patient died three days later.

Food Illness

Older adults are more susceptible to food poisoning because of their weakened immune systems. If you add illness, and/or disease, their immune systems are even weaker and their bodies cannot fight off infectious organisms.

Food poisoning can also lead to dehydration and can cause the development of pressure sores. This is why it is so important to make sure all food is properly stored, and date marked. Staff members should also be aware of any allergies each patient has and prepare food accordingly.

Accidental Patient Injuries

Many of your patients will need assistance getting in and of their bed. Quite a few of them might also be confined to a wheelchair. While lifting a patient multiple times a day, accidents can happen, even when a patient is in the care of the most careful staff member.

Each of these events can spur lawsuits against your assisted living facility. They can occur at any time, some more often than others. Considering that 1.5 million preventable adverse drug events occur every year in the United States alone, professional liability is important to include in your assisted living insurance package.

**For more information about Assisted Living Insurance contact me at CToney@SouthernStatesInsurance.com or call me at (678) 715-9119.

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