Elderly Patient Falls and Dies in Nursing Home from Traumatic Brain Bleed
The following excerpt from a Notice of Intent to File Claim, or more commonly called “Notice of Intent to Sue,” is a recent case that the litigators at Erlich, Rosen, Bartnick & Cook, P.C., have begun on behalf of one of our clients. If you wish to discuss a medical malpractice claim please contact ERBC at either www.ERBClaw.com or 1-800-595-0506 for a free consultation.
Factual Basis for Claim
Plaintiff’s decedent, age 80, was transferred from a local hospital to the nursing home run by the hospital sometime in the afternoon of September 5, 2007. She was assessed by several employees of the Defendant Nursing Home who indicate in the records that she was a high risk for falling, was confused, lacked understanding or retention for safety factors, and was unable to follow safety directions to prevent falls. The records also indicate that the Defendant Nursing Home employees were aware of her high fall risk and she was to be put on “very close supervision”.
Only one hour after Plaintiff was evaluated and put on “very close supervision” because of her lack of understanding for safety factors and confusion, a male nurse/aide by the name of Brian took her to the bathroom and left her there alone. The records indicate that Brian left Plaintiff’s room and returned 10-15 minutes later and found Plaintiff on the bathroom floor, next to the toilet in a prone position. Brian placed Plaintiff back in bed without notifying either her family or a physician of her fall. At approximately 3:00 a.m. on September 6, 2007, seven hours after she had fallen, Plaintiff was found to be unresponsive in bed and bleeding from her mouth and rectum.
Plaintiff was taken by ambulance to the emergency department where a CT scan of the head found a large bleed from her earlier fall. Plaintiff died on September 6, 2007 from blunt force head trauma as a direct result from a brain bleed from her fall several hours earlier at Defendant Nursing Home.
The standard of care for patients in a step down nursing home environment who have been assessed as a high risk for falling due to confusion and inability to comprehend safety directions is to not leave them alone in the bathroom unsupervised. The standard of care for this type of patient is to have an employee present in the bathroom with the patient or waiting just outside the bathroom door within visual and verbal communication range in order to be able to immediately assist them on completion of voiding and safely return the patient to her bed. The standard of care further requires that when finding a patient prone on the bathroom floor that a physician be immediately consulted, as well as a family representative notified.
Treatment must be instituted immediately, including having a physician completely and thoroughly assess the patient and that the patient be transported to an emergency department for radiological testing and a neurosurgery consult. The standard of care further requires that the medical facility have protocol in place to address the situation where a patient has fallen which would require that the patient be timely examined and assessed by a physician and that proper tests, including radiographic examination, be ordered and timely completed, or that the patient be transferred in a timely fashion to an emergency department for evaluation, which would include a neurosurgery consult in situations where the patient has suffered head trauma.
As a direct result of the negligence of Defendant Nursing Home by its employees, Plaintiff was allowed to fall to the floor in the bathroom of her room, striking her head, which then caused a brain bleed which went undiagnosed and untreated for a period of several hours. This resulted in Plaintiff suffering tissue death throughout her brain which ultimately resulted in her death only a few hours after being placed in the care of Defendant Nursing Home.
