My Grandmother Was Pushed And Severely Injured Within 48 Hours Of Moving To A Memory Care Facility, Is There Anything I Can Do?

My grandmother has been declining for awhile and my mom decided to move her into a memory care facility at the beginning of this week. I got a call today from my mother in tears because supposedly another patient had pushed her to the ground. She has a giant black eye, as well as terrible swelling. Also a giant bruise on her back.

• This happened at around 1am. My grandmother was apparently anxiously walking around and going into other patients rooms. Why is she walking around 1am unsupervised?? The facility was well aware my grandmother gets very anxious and scared easily, especially with her condition now. She just moved in, why is nobody watching even at night? Also the poor other patients probably getting scared half to death.

• Which brings me to this point: this poor man. A strange woman walks into his room in the middle of the night, he’s probably scared, gets upset and pushes her. I really want to make clear that I do not blame this man at all, and I feel bad for him and his family. Instead of getting charged he’s forced to be put on a violent offenders list as the police had to get involved. I really feel like the facility and the management in particular are trying to sweep everything under the rug and be very passive, while also blaming this poor sick man for everything and not themselves for letting this happen.

•She gets taken to the hospital, except it’s not the one my mom put in as the one to take her too if anything happens. They take her too a different hospital.

•My mom was not informed of all this happening until 11am. They have a clause in their own rules that the family must be informed right away if anything happens. They put it in their report that they contacted my mom, but they lied. They never did. I don’t know if the head person in charge just…forgot? But when they called her they acted like they had already told her. My grandmother was already in the hospital for multiple hours.

•The hospital apparently did not notice the giant bruise on her back, as my mom found out about it a day later when my grandmother was complaining about pain back there. No mention of it in medical report, no nothing. I know this is more on the hospital than the facility, but MAYBE if she was taken to the hospital we wanted them too, they would’ve saw it. I’m not saying that definitely would’ve happened, but now we’ll never know. Also, how did she get a bruise on her back and also on her face? How do you fall like that? It’s just suspicious that we have no idea what really happened, and how does something like that happen.

•She was taken back to the care facility. The main nurse “in charge” really did not offer any sort of..anything. My mother said the lady apologized and said this had never happened before and that it was her opinion that we should move my grandmother into their hospice section and get her on anxiety meds. Her completely lack of empathy and frankly reality is disturbing to me. She doesn’t need hospice right now, she needs help, which is what she’s PAYING for. My mother had to basically coax her into another solution. That solution being an alarm on her bed that goes off if she gets up at night. Why was this not already an option? Why was this not opted for over hospice? I’m just genuinely disturbed at the perceived lack of empathy. I can understand getting a little numb when you’re dealing with this everyday, but too a point.

At this point, my mom is deciding on whether to keep her there, move her and stress her out even more again, or move her back to my mothers house where she used to be living. All around it’s just a shitty situation, and I just can’t believe the way the facility has acted about the whole thing, and especially the “head nurse”.

I have heard lots of bad stories of care facilities and not treating patients right, so I was already nervous about it for her. But to me, this is just completely ridiculous. Within 48 hours, she gets severely injured, you try and sweep everything under the rug and stick her in hospice care? I am trying to stick to the facts and not get angry while typing this but, what the hell. I’ve never worked in a facility/center like this so I don’t know how it operates. My mother is so stressed out with all this, and my family and I don’t know what to do. Does anybody have any advice?