Abuse occurs in persons of all ages. In questions of elder abuse, the emergency medicine expert will pay careful attention to signs of unexplained injury, laboratory findings of inappropriate medications, signs of bruises, welts, lacerations, burns, disease and infection, and other physical findings consistent with abuse and neglect.
Elder abuse remains relatively under-publicized. Victims are often too incapacitated or fearful to complain, and too isolated to be noticed. Sometimes the best clues supporting elder abuse and exploitation are documentation of inappropriate financial goings on – transactions, transfers of accounts and deeds, excessive payments for services, and unusual access to valuables.
The Forensic Panel’s physician experts are sensitive to the clues and crevasses of elder abuse. Emergency and family medicine specialists join geriatric professionals to offer different perspectives available to a particular matter.
Given the subtlety of much of the pertinent evidence in elder abuse cases, the peer-review of The Forensic Panel affords cost-effective oversight to much higher levels of investigative magnification. Elder abuse questions are thus handled with caution and sensitivity, not to the exclusion of a willingness to consider evidence carefully for what it is, and discipline to acknowledge what it is not.