Hello
My sister is 45 years old and is now in need of long term permanent care. She has no assets and no healthcare proxy, guardianship or POA. She needs to be placed in along term facility but her current health plan only covers short term care.
We have worked with the hospital she is (in Worcester) to establish a temporary guardianship working with their attorney. The Social Worker has been very aggressive with us telling us in a meeting that was called to understand my sisters condition that we must select a nursing facility at that moment or she would be shipped off to a facility of their choice. Fortunately, the hospital attorney called during this meeting and explained that a temp (and then perm) guardianship needed to be established before decisions had to be made.
We worked with the hospital attorney to set this up and unbeknownst to us, the Social Worker told the attorney to stop paperwork for temp. guardianship for the family and instead only process paperwork for permanent guardianship for an attorney of the hospitals choice! I have just learned of this today.
The S.W. insists that she gave us a chance to make a selection at the original meeting and since we didn’t we must now go to court and contest their choice.
Questions:
Can I sue this hospital for negligence? My sister has wernicke-korsakoff-syndrome, there may be some time sensitivity to getting her treatment and her ability to recover.
Is there anything an attorney can do to force the hospital to stop lying to us and work on behalf of my sister?
What else?
Signed: Extremely appalled and looking for a legal solution!
Editor's Response
Without a lot more information about who said and did what, and when they said and did it, I honestly cannot give you any useful advice but this: Contact an elder law attorney in your neck of the woods, sit down with him or her and discuss the matter. I think if you want to control the guardianship process you need to jump on this quickly. Good luck.