Can nursing homes provide bed rails or cushions bedside on the floor?

Ask about padded fall mats which are different than cushions and may be allowed.

And just how low is the bed at it's lowest setting? There are specialty beds that lower to within 6" of the floor, if the facility doesn't have any available you might ask about their providing one or if you could provide or share the cost of one.

Floor lowered bed. Up against the wall (side of lean). Bed brakes on. 2nd mattress on floor other side of bed. Seems common sense to me - but ask about laws.

Using risk management;
liklyhood of bed fall *very high*,
likelihood of injury *extremly high*, severity of incident *severe to catastrophic*

Yes it is tricky for staff to manoeuvre people from the floor mattress back onto the bed. (This needs to be done to enable raising the bed to attend to personal care & get up from safely).

Is the facility worried about staff injury? Yes they should be. But also their resident!

Maybe they need staff training on how to use slide sheets to transfer a resident from a floor mattress (aka crash mat) onto a bed. If I can do it with Covid positive confused dementia patients I'm sure any trained NH staff can do it.

Different rules apply in different states and they are often different from hospitals vs nursing homes. In NJ no bed rails in nursing homes and the last I checked beds can be lowered but mattress can't just be placed on floor (BTW, I've seen residents roll off the mattress on the floor right onto the floor also although that's not a very long fall). You can check the nursing homes statement by reading the regulations on your state's Dept of Health website if you don't think you are being told the truth.

I’m In Illinois

You don't say what state you're in which I think makes a difference as to rules. In MN my MIL's NH puts the mattress right on the floor. Can't have bedrails, either.