A recent investigation by New Mexico In Depth examined how assisted living facilities across the state are caring for residents with increasingly complex medical needs, often without the staffing, training, or oversight to do so safely. The investigation documented patterns that will feel painfully familiar to our team at Harvey, Foote & Baker Law Firm: medication errors, unreported falls, understaffed night shifts, and inspection systems too thin to catch problems before someone gets hurt. If you have a loved one in assisted living in New Mexico, or you're searching for a facility now, this reporting will matter to you, too.
Assisted Living Wasn't Built for Current Demands
Assisted living was created as a middle ground between independent living and skilled nursing care, meant for people who needed a little help with daily tasks but not round-the-clock medical supervision. That's not what many facilities look like today. As the reporting found, assisted living communities now routinely accept residents with dementia, heart and lung conditions, kidney disease, and complicated medication schedules once considered nursing-home-level care.
Families are often assured a facility can meet these needs. But assisted living staff can be certified to provide unsupervised care after just 16 hours of training, with no medical background required. When a facility takes on residents whose needs exceed what its staff is trained or staffed to handle, the risk of a serious mistake isn't hypothetical. It's foreseeable.
New Mexico's Oversight Gaps
Unlike nursing homes, assisted living facilities aren't regulated by the federal government. Oversight is left entirely to the states, and in New Mexico, the bar is low. Facilities aren't required to publicly report staffing levels. Proactive inspections, the kind meant to catch problems before they escalate, didn't happen at all in 2025, despite state promises to increase them after a 2024 sweep found the vast majority of facilities reviewed had failed at least one safety standard. Inspection reports that are supposed to be public often aren't posted where families can find them.
What this means for you is that the burden of vetting a facility, and of noticing when something is wrong, often falls on families themselves, with very little help from the state.
We've Seen This Pattern Before
At Harvey, Foote & Baker Law Firm, the report from New Mexico In Depth confirms what we've spent years seeing firsthand. Before founding our firm, Attorney Dusti Harvey spent more than six years as in-house corporate counsel for a national nursing home chain, personally overseeing more than 1,500 lawsuits from the facility's side of the table. She knows how these facilities operate, how they respond to complaints, and how they defend themselves when something goes wrong. But today, we put that insider knowledge to work for the families we represent.
We've handled cases involving medication errors, falls, wandering, and neglect that mirror what this investigation describes. These aren't isolated incidents. They're the predictable result of facilities accepting residents they aren't equipped to care for, in a state where enforcement hasn't kept pace as times and needs have changed.
What You Can Do to Protect Your Loved One
If you have a family member in assisted living, trust your instincts if something feels off. Ask the facility directly about staffing levels, staff training, and how medication errors are reported and investigated. Visit at different times of day. Document any injuries, unexplained changes in behavior, or concerns in writing, and keep copies of communications with facility staff.
If you already suspect your loved one has been neglected or harmed, don't wait to get answers. Facilities aren't always forthcoming, and records that should help you often aren't easy to access.
We're Here to Help – Reach Out Anytime
You deserve to know your loved one is safe, and you deserve answers when they aren't. If you're concerned about the care a family member is receiving in a New Mexico assisted living facility, or you believe neglect or abuse has already occurred, we encourage you to reach out. Call us at (505) 295-2245 for a free, no-obligation consultation. We'll listen to what's happened, help you understand your options, and if you decide to move forward, we'll be in your corner every step of the way.