The most common nursing home infections are urinary tract infections, pneumonia and other respiratory infections, skin and soft-tissue infections including infected bedsores, gastrointestinal infections like C. diff and norovirus, antibiotic-resistant infections such as MRSA, and sepsis, the life-threatening response when any of these reaches the bloodstream. Many of them are preventable with basic care.
A frail resident can get sick even in a good facility. What isn't normal is a home that skips the hygiene, monitoring, and treatment that keep an infection from turning deadly. Our Buffalo nursing home abuse lawyers at Rosenthal, Kooshoian & Lennon, LLP hold facilities accountable when neglect is the reason a loved one got seriously ill, as part of our broader Buffalo nursing home abuse practice.
Call us 24/7 at 716-854-1300 to speak with a personal injury lawyer near you, or contact us for a FREE consultation.
Several risks stack on top of each other. Older adults have weaker immune systems, many carry chronic conditions like diabetes that make infections harder to fight, and a lot of residents have catheters, feeding tubes, or IV lines that give bacteria a way in. They also live in close quarters, so one infection spreads fast.
None of that is the facility's fault. What a facility controls is whether it follows the basic infection-control routines that keep those known risks in check, clean hands, catheter care, watching for early signs. That line, between an unavoidable illness and a preventable one, is where our nursing home abuse lawyers focus.
They fall into a few well-known categories: urinary tract infections, respiratory infections like pneumonia, skin and soft-tissue infections including infected pressure sores, gastrointestinal infections like C. diff and norovirus, drug-resistant infections such as MRSA, and the sepsis they can lead to. Each is common, and several turn deadly when they're missed.
Here's a closer look at the ones our Buffalo injury lawyers see most:
If a loved one developed a pressure sore that turned septic, our Buffalo bedsore lawyers handle that overlap in detail.
When it was preventable, or made worse by care that wasn't given. Certain patterns point to a problem: poor hand hygiene, a catheter left in too long, a bedsore allowed to form and then infect, dirty conditions, understaffing, and staff who failed to spot an infection early and get the resident treated before it turned serious.
That last failure does the most damage. A UTI caught early is a short course of antibiotics. The same UTI ignored until it becomes sepsis can be fatal. The delay is usually where the real harm, and the real negligence, lives, and it's what our nursing home abuse lawyers look for in the records.
Sepsis is the body's overwhelming, out-of-control response to an infection, and it's a medical emergency. It moves fast, and in an elderly resident the early signs can be subtle, confusion, a change in alertness, rapid breathing, fever or an unusually low temperature, a racing heart. Trained staff should catch them. When they don't, a treatable infection becomes life-threatening in hours.
Sepsis is where a preventable infection turns deadly, and it rarely appears without warning. Someone usually missed that warning. If a loved one was hospitalized with sepsis that traced back to an untreated infection, our Buffalo injury lawyers take a hard look at that timeline, because the gap between the first symptom and any treatment often tells the whole story.
Watch for fever, new confusion or a sudden change in mental state, unusual weakness or fatigue, changes in urine or pain when urinating, coughing or trouble breathing, a wound that looks red, swollen, or is draining, and diarrhea. Any of these deserves prompt medical attention, and your instinct that something is off is worth trusting.
You can't be there around the clock, but you can pay attention on every visit. Family members are frequently the first to notice a resident isn't right, and pushing for a real medical evaluation can make the difference. Our nursing home abuse lawyers have seen how often a family's early concern was brushed aside by a facility that should have acted.
Yes, when a preventable infection was caused by the facility's neglect. A serious infection that developed or worsened because of inadequate care is a form of nursing home neglect, and a claim can recover for the harm. New York also gives nursing home residents strong legal protections, which can make these cases stronger still.
A serious infection is often the first visible sign of a deeper pattern of poor care, and it can open a broader look at how a facility treats its residents. Where the neglect was egregious, additional damages may be possible, and where an infection led to death, the family can pursue a wrongful death claim. Our Buffalo nursing home abuse lawyers pursue every category of harm the facts support.
Make sure your loved one gets medical care first, then start documenting. Note what you're seeing and when, photograph any wounds, and request the care records, the treatment notes, the wound-care logs, the incident reports. Those records often tell a very different story than what you're told in the hallway.
The paperwork controlled by the facility is where these cases are proven, and it can be altered or lost, which is a reason not to wait. Getting the records into the hands of a lawyer who can have them reviewed is the real first step. Our nursing home abuse lawyers handle that review and tell you honestly whether something went wrong.
Our Buffalo nursing home abuse lawyers prove the neglect through the facility's own records. From the start, the medical and care documentation gets preserved, the facility's staffing and inspection history gets investigated, and medical experts get brought in to show the infection was preventable and the required care wasn't provided.
Each case gets built on the paper trail and the timeline. Our injury attorneys gather the care plans, the medication and skin-assessment logs, and the state inspection and complaint records, connect the facility's failures to the illness, and identify every responsible party, including the corporate owners who set the staffing levels. Most cases resolve through negotiation, but each one gets prepared as if it is going to trial.
If your loved one suffered a serious infection you believe was caused by neglect at a facility in Buffalo or Western New York, the attorneys at Rosenthal, Kooshoian & Lennon, LLP are ready to help. A free, confidential review of the care records will tell you whether the facility failed your family, with no fee unless we recover for you.
Time matters, both for your loved one and for the records that prove these cases. Our Buffalo nursing home abuse lawyers will get the documentation, bring in the right medical experts, and hold the facility accountable if its neglect made your loved one sick. Reach out here whenever you're ready.
Call us 24/7 at 716-854-1300 to speak with a personal injury lawyer near you, or contact us for a FREE consultation.
Disclaimer: This post is general information, not legal or medical advice, and reading it does not create an attorney client relationship. Laws and deadlines can change; the principles here reflect New York law as of 2026, and how they apply depends on the facts. Every case is different, and prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. For advice about a specific situation, consult a licensed New York attorney, and for medical concerns, a qualified healthcare provider.
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