Can you sue a hospital for stage 4 bedsores after trauma care? In this episode of The Medical Legal Guys, Ben Martin discusses how serious pressure ulcers, also known as bed sores or bedsores, can develop in trauma centers when hospitals fail to properly monitor, turn, treat, and protect vulnerable patients. Stage 4 bedsores are not minor wounds. They can expose deep tissue, muscle, or bone, lead to infection, and create life-threatening complications. When a patient enters a level one trauma center expecting high-level care, families may be shocked to discover that their loved one was discharged with severe, untreated pressure injuries. In this conversation, nationally recognized attorney Ben Martin and Dr. Greg Vigna explains how pressure ulcers can develop in hospital and trauma care settings, why multidisciplinary wound care matters, and how failures in staffing, ownership priorities, discharge planning, and patient safety protocols may contribute to preventable injuries.
Topics covered in this video:
• What causes bedsores in trauma patients?
• When are pressure ulcers a sign of hospital neglect?
• Why level one trauma centers still see serious wound care failures
• How improper turning, monitoring, and wound management can harm patients
• Medicare policies related to hospital-acquired pressure ulcers
• The legal and ethical responsibility hospitals have to prevent bedsores
• Why families should ask questions when a loved one develops a pressure injury.
A stage 4 bedsore after hospital or trauma care may be a sign that something went wrong. This video is intended to help patients and families better understand the warning signs of hospital negligence, pressure ulcer complications, and the importance of accountability in patient safety.
Ben C Martin | Ben Martin Law Group 3500 MAPLE AVE. SUITE 400 DALLAS, TEXAS 75219 (214) 761-6614 | bencmartin.com
Greg Vigna, JD, MD | Vigna Law Group 8939 S. Sepulveda Blvd. Suite 102 Los Angeles, CA, 90045 817-809-9023 | vignalawgroup.com
B: I'm Ben C.
V: I'm Doctor V.
The Medical Legal Guys.
V: Hello, I'm Doctor. Vigna. We are seeing some very big bedsores coming from level one trauma centers. And this is quite disturbing because level one trauma centers are supposed to be an exceptionally safe place for people who have suffered serious injury or illness. And we are seeing bedsores develop at level one trauma centers. And simply these facilities that their doctors are discharging these serious injuries to nursing homes without future treatment.
B: Agree with you. A level one trauma center if you go to downtown Dallas, Texas, or near downtown Dallas, Texas, you're going to see Baylor Medical Center, two level one trauma center. Go to Parkland Hospital, level one trauma center. Other cities. Do you see those big hospitals that are taking in a lot of patients, and they have staffed emergency rooms.
Those are mostly going to be all level one hospitals. There are hospitals that aren’t level one that are certainly great hospitals and do good work, but they're just not of that ilk. Right. So it's very unusual that you would think that you would see neglect in bedsore type developments in level one trauma centers. It just shouldn't happen.
V: Yeah. So we have two cases that come to mind. One from the University of Chicago, a level one trauma center, and one involving the University of Pennsylvania, level one trauma center, Lancaster General Hospital. And in both cases, our client was discharged to a lower level of care. And without a treatment plan that would provide a pathway to cure.
These bedsores are serious injuries. And the literature shows that stage four bed sores that go down to bone with infection have a death rate. At one year of 17%, 44% of these patients with stage four bed sores that involved bone will be hospitalized again at one year. For these level one trauma centers to market themselves as the safe place for people who suffer trauma in the community and our life flighted to that hospital.
But at the same time, these hospitals are discharging trauma that occurs in their hospital without taking care of the trauma that they cause. Our clients, we find that.
B: Unacceptable, unacceptable and quite frankly, should be the subject of action in, in our case, action and form of lawsuit. When Docttor Vigna talks about trauma, you know, the development of a bed sore generally comes from the lack of turning the patient. It's a never event. Medicare says it should never happen. Medicare says we're not paying the hospital for bed sores that it causes, and they don't.
V: Level one trauma centers have 24 hour trauma coverage. They have 24 hour in-house neurosurgery coverage. They have every specialty involving trauma that a level one trauma center has. All the specialists in the hospital with the skills to be able to fix a bed sore. There are requirements of coverage and services provided, and there are requirements in terms of kind of a multidisciplinary approach, an approach to care that provides a safe environment of care communication within transfers from one floor to another, and protections for the public as to the institution that a level one trauma institution should be a safe place, top to bottom, for patients to develop a stage for beds, or we understand that these things may happen, okay, and they're the results of negligence. But for a level one trauma center with all the specialists in-house, with the skills to manage the beds or to simply discharge patients to fend for themselves with the gigantic sore to a nursing home or lower level of care. Without the specialists who can manage these types of problems.
It's, it's very disturbing. And personally, I unfortunately had two grade four bed sores that occurred under my watch. In 25 years of providing inpatient, hospital care at a rehab hospital. And in both cases, I didn't discharge the patient. I figured out a way to find a plastic surgeon to fix these wounds. I manage the wounds. I prepared the wounds, and, we cured them.The wounds. And I did this at rehab hospitals. Okay. And for a level one trauma center to take care of trauma, but not take care of the trauma that occurs in their facility. It's despicable conduct, in my opinion.
B: It's almost unbelievable. Is believable because it happened and it's happening a lot. You know, we represent a lot of people, a lot of families whose family members have had this event. The development of a to decubitus ulcers are also known as a bed sores, also known as a pressure sore. And a lot of times they do happen in nursing home, where the level of care is many times less than a hospital. Quite frankly happening stepdown nursing facilities, long term acute care facilities, a short term facilities, and basically any type of hospital you can find. There are folks that unfortunately and tragically have developed these bedsores through the negligence of the folks at those, facilities. We talk about the level one trauma centers. It happens everywhere. Just really surprising the level of this mismanaged care.
And we have reason to believe that there are serious basic reasons for it that have nothing to do with the hospital itself, except for who owned and what kind of money is being spent on the care, and what kind of employees are they able to hire because, what are they doing with the money that they're making? Who is going to investors? Is this going back into the hospital to help treat patients? And we're seeing more and more and more that it doesn't appear that the folks are churning back in the money that's being made into their care, and that it's almost profits over safety and profits over safety leads to tragic events. And in many instances, it is the Seminole reason why the bad care occurs.
V: And the level of ambivalence for treating physicians where a wound occurs under their watch, I find very disturbing the nurses that were on my ward and at my hospital. If there was a pressure injury, they were to call me. They knew I would be showing up and I would tell them when that patient should be ready and turn with the wound care team, and we would make steps to make that patient safe.
So these level one trauma centers, they're not only causing the bedsore, but they're not acting affirmatively to make sure that patient is safe from further injury. They're not acting or affirmatively to make sure that they have a treatment plan in place for cure, which would be ensuring nutrition is adequate to ensure that there is reliable pressure relief, to ensure that the wound is properly debrided to viable tissue, that the wound is not infected, that when the wound starts granulated and that a plastic surgeon is then available for closure and they're just not acting affirmatively to make a person safe and to treat us. So we are suing them for negligence, for causing a bed sore as well as unsafe discharge.
B: That's right. Thank you very much.