Posted on 02/17/2009 7:41:53 AM PST by TMD
and they think they have a "winning lottery ticket" for quick easy bucks...
Do Please get a lawyer, Something similar happened to my dad years ago. He had a small stroke and would have recovered but the hospital did not care for him well and developed ulcers on his heals. We (the family) noticed it and they said it just happened. next thing we know they wanted him transferred out to a Rehab center. He was at rehab for a few days when they knew his feet were bad. They pushed him out to a hospital who advised amputation. My poor father had his first leg amputated up to the stump. Sent him back to rehab. Another week and they sent him back to hospital to have other leg removed. within 1 month a small TIA (minor stroke) and this man lost both his legs. At that point there was no choice in having rehab so they wanted him out and we had to place him in a nursing home. He lived (if you want to call it that) for another 7 years. He just couldn’t get past the idea that so many doctors screwed up.
Drs/Hospitals will want to get the patient out of their place asap to minimize damages. In this case the first and last had to pay. the rehab place got off scott free.
The doctor (floor manager) who described it as “severe, troubling, concerning” said it did not look like an atypical compression fracture. A biopsy was ordered to rule out any lesions or cancer that may have contributed. The results came back “non-diagnostic”. A cytology test was also supposed to be run but, somehow, it never was done (which we found out a week a and a half later).
The man-handling we observed involved twisting him to get him in and out of bed, laying his bed flat, though we told them he COULD NOT lay flat without pain. Every time they came to get him for a CT/MRI/Xray they brought a back board and a flat gurney which we told them he could not be transported that they needed to transport him in his bed and move him to the back board for the shortest time possible for the test.
These are just the things we observed when we were with him in the room, who knows what went on when we weren’t there.
Sounds typical of the high-quality care available at K-——.
And on the note of knowing the environment well ... try not to get yourselves too worked up until you know the facts. The big question I would have is “did he fall?”. If there was a fall involved then the hospital has some serious answering to do. If not - you will never find evidence that your father was “manhandled” unless you are able to produce an eye witness or hospital a document that establishes clearly such an event occurred. A patient with a history of compression fractures is at risk for future fractures simply by being alive. Many elderly people who “fall and break their hip” actually do so in reverse order ... their hip bone shears and then they fall and hit the ground. Some people's bones become so brittle and frail that they can't support their own weight without breaking a bone. Your father may be one of those people. The history of compression fractures is kinda defacto evidence of such.
It's good that you kept a list of “errors” you have seen yourself. Once again, keep a couple things in mind. It has been my personal experience that most, if not all, of the things you perceive as “errors” are not errors at all unless you are a health care professional yourself and you understand what you are looking at. Issues such as replacing an oxygen supply device are not “errors” unless the patients clinical situation demanded oxygen at that moment. Maybe it did - I'm not saying you are wrong - I'm only saying that you should be prepared for many of your concerns to be deemed irrelevant either because a medical professional would not testify in court that it was an error or because it does not pertain directly to the back injury in question.
Get some professional help, be open to what they say, hold those responsible accountable for what was done or not done (did somebody leave him unattended and he fell out of bed??), but also resist the temptation to extort money from the hospital and health care providers if they happened to be unlucky enough to be caring for your father when an inevitable injury occurred.
My advice to the OP would be to hire a private spinal specialist ASAP to examine the patient. Medicare won't pay for it but it will be worth it to pay for it yourself. Don't waste money on a lawyer until you get a real medical opinion about what caused the spinal injury. Bringing in a lawyer makes the entire situation adversarial. If the patient has a degenerating spine the injury might have been unavoidable. It is inexcusable for the hospital to transfer him out before getting an opinion from a specialist.
If he already had compression fractures I would tend to think that the additional fracture is not from manhandling but from the nature of how one has to be moved in a hospital bed. To be rolled or aided in sitting up can put additional stress on an already weakened spine (note the compression fractures which already exist). Kaiaser is not a bad hospital ( which city were you in?) though some are better than others (eg I would go to Kaiser San Jose but not Kaiser Santa Theresa). Anyway, you can get an attorney if you want to go through that whole mess or you can get your dad home and enjoy time with him
My goodness I have never heard of taking a patient to CT scan who is in bed via a gurney. My dad has had several CT and normal Xrays and each time he goes in his hospital bed.
The problem is that unless he can regain some mobility, he will never be coming home. It takes at least two people to “log roll” him to shift his position every two hours to prevent bedsores, or to get him cleaned up after a BM (which are very infrequent). They have a clamshell brace to help stabilize his back for physical therapy. It takes two or three people to get him into it. Last week the physical therapist only put the back half of the brace on when they moved him to a chair.
Medicare pays for 100 days of skilled nursing home care. It sounds like a lot except that he’s already been in the hospital since Jan 13th with no improvement between Jan and Feb MRIs.
We are looking for a specific care plan from a spine doc. The spine Docs are at Oakland and Santa Teresa. We’ve been told that unless he’s a candidate for surgery, he won’t be moved to the spine clinic. We’re chasing our tails since we don’t know what the “real” story is, we’re getting everything second-hand from the hospitalist.
Some people need suing.
They dropped him. Classic malpractrice, probably understaffed or undertrained staff. Moving people takes more knowledge than appears.
That said, getting to a rehab place is a good idea. Hospitals are nasty and staff infections waiting to happen.
Before you do or say anything else with the hospital, talk to an attorney. If you already work with an attorney you trust, ask him to recommend someone in that line of work. Either way, do it now, because you may face statutory deadlines in an action against the hospital, and since you’ve already complained to the hospital, I can GUARANTEE they are already on the matter with their legal team.
“Yep, everybody on FR hates trial lawyers until they need one.”
+1
This happened to my mother. She kept telling the nurse on duty that it wasn't on, the nurse kept insisting that it was.
Hours later, when the repiratory therapist arrived to treat my mother, his first remark was, "My God, your oxygen is turned off."
The next day, my mother had a stroke and died.
Lawyers are like guns, you can have mine last.
“Yep, everybody on FR hates trial lawyers until they need one.”
+2
If you have concerns about ambulance chasing, I strongly suggest that you get a recommendation for an attorney from someone you know and trust. Failing that, you can always contact your local bar association, and ask them for a recommendation.
The important thing to remember about this is that if this turns into a lawsuit down the road, the things you do now that seem to make perfect sense can wreak havoc with your chances in the suit.
Moreover, getting a lawyer gets you actual legal advice, which is what you need here, while a legal nurse consultant is just an expert on what the hospital should be doing.
When you hire a lawyer, he represents you. If you make it clear that your goals are first and foremost taking care of your father, and worry about litigation later, if at all, he will help you work that out. If you want to sue anybody and everybody who can be sued, he’ll help you work that out too.
A good attorney will provide you with solutions to your problems, not just to represent you in court. He’ll have to objectively assess your options for you, and then explain them to you for you to choose from. Then he can represent your interests in any action you choose to take. He is objective for you, and your representative to others. You’re in the driver’s seat.
A bad attorney will not listen to you and try to railroad you into something you don’t want to do.
The short of it is, get the attorney, and a good one should be objective for you, and should be your bulldog to anyone else.
What did your father say about how the fracture happened? Can’t he inform you if he has been man handled?
I agree, no one who can not care for themselves, or is dependent on a hospital worker, should be left alone in a hospital without a family member present to watch what is going on.
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