Maryland Nursing Home Lawyer Blog
Last updated September 29, 2026 · Reviewed by Jack D. Lebowitz
Researchers from the University of Maryland School of Medicine and the Maryland Department of Health examined every skilled nursing facility in the state for signs that a drug-resistant fungus had spread from resident to resident. Their study appeared online in the American Journal of Infection Control on August 25, 2026, and it found transmission in 21 of Maryland’s 227 facilities between 2019 and 2023.
Spread concentrated in homes that care for residents on ventilators, where 13 of 17 facilities had it. Transmission was also associated with lower family ratings of care and with higher rates of pressure sores among long-stay residents at high risk of them. Those two markers are things a family can see and ask about during an ordinary visit, and they bear on the question at the center of a Maryland nursing home infection claim, which is whether the facility ran the infection control program federal rules require.
Infection cases are part of the work Lebowitz & Mzhen Personal Injury Lawyers does for nursing home residents and their families across the state, and the records that answer that question belong to the facility.
What the Maryland Study Found
Of 227 Maryland skilled nursing facilities studied from 2019 through 2023, 21, or 9 percent, had C. auris transmission. Among the 17 facilities caring for residents on ventilators, 13 did. Facilities with transmission had higher pressure sore rates among high-risk long-stay residents, 14.6 percent compared with 9.4 percent, and were more likely to receive poor family ratings of care.
- auris is a multidrug-resistant fungus that the study’s authors describe as associated with substantial illness and death. It now carries the formal name Candidozyma auris. When the researchers accounted for facility characteristics together, two remained independently associated with transmission, caring for ventilated residents and a poorer family rating of care. The authors recommend that screening and infection prevention resources go first to ventilator facilities and to homes showing other signs of lower quality.
The study measures associations across facilities. It does not find that any particular home caused any particular infection, and no Maryland facility is named in it. What it offers a family is a description of where this organism has actually moved in this state, and which visible features of a home tended to travel with it.
What Federal Rules Require of a Nursing Home
42 C.F.R. § 483.80 requires a nursing facility to establish and maintain an infection prevention and control program designed to provide a safe, sanitary environment and to help prevent the development and transmission of communicable diseases and infections. The regulation spells out what the program has to contain, including a system for preventing, identifying, reporting, investigating, and controlling infections; written policies covering surveillance, isolation, standard and transmission-based precautions, and hand hygiene; an antibiotic stewardship program; and a record of incidents and the corrective action taken. The facility must also designate one or more infection preventionists to run it.
If a relative of yours developed a serious infection in a facility, those requirements give you specific things to ask about. Whether the home screens new admissions arriving from hospitals, how it places a resident known to carry a resistant organism, who its infection preventionist is, and what the last survey said about infection control are all answerable questions. The facility’s inspection history is public through the Maryland Office of Health Care Quality and CMS Care Compare, and a home cited for infection control deficiencies before a resident was infected has a harder time describing the case as bad luck.
When an Infection Becomes a Claim
A nursing facility is a health care provider under Maryland’s health care malpractice claims law, so a claim against one for medical injury begins in the Health Care Alternative Dispute Resolution Office rather than directly in circuit court. Where an infection contributes to a resident’s death, the family’s wrongful death claim generally has to be filed within three years of the death under CJP § 3-904(g).
The proof in these cases is documentary. Culture and laboratory results establish what the resident had and when. Isolation orders, or their absence, show what the home did after it knew. Staffing records show who was on the floor, care plans show what was supposed to happen, and wound documentation shows whether pressure sores were being watched. The facility holds all of it, so an early request reaches more than one filed after a year of informal questions.
We represent families of nursing home residents throughout Maryland, from facilities in Baltimore County to homes on the Eastern Shore and in the Washington suburbs. When a resident develops a serious infection or a pressure sore, our attorneys examine the home’s infection control records, its staffing levels, its survey history, and the care plan it was supposed to follow. We take these cases on contingency, and we pursue them through the state’s malpractice process and into court when a facility will not answer for what happened.
Talking With Us About an Infection in a Maryland Nursing Home
An infection claim rests almost entirely on the facility’s own records, and those are easier to preserve while a resident is still there or has recently left. Lebowitz & Mzhen Personal Injury Lawyers represents residents and families in nursing home cases across Maryland. We are glad to talk it through with you. Call (800) 654-1949 or contact our office, and the case evaluation is free.