Elder Law

City Settles Suit with MS Patient

By Levin & Perconti

A city and a home health care agency wrote a check for $600,000 to a woman with multiple sclerosis after she nearly died in their care. The settlement is for a negligence lawsuit alleging the woman was neglected in her wheelchair and was left for so long that she developed life-threatening bedsores. The woman is in a city-run program that pays contracted caregivers to take care of her at home. The plan has workers shift her weight every 15 minutes to prevent pressure ulcers or bedsores. In 2005, while the city was paying more than $3,000 a month for an agency to care for the victim, the caregiver at the time says she wasn?t moving the victim much at all. The worker wrote in a declaration that the victim complained of pain, but no one had trained her on anything to do with pressure sores. The suit alleged that the care providers basically left the woman to rot in her wheelchair. The victim was rushed to the hospital where doctors operated twice on the sores they had cut through to the bone. They were also infected with MRSA, potentially life-threatening bacteria. The victim hopes that the settlement money will buy her a better chair and pay for physical therapy. To read the full story, click here.

Full post as published by Illinois Nursing Home Abuse Blog on November 15, 2008 (boomark / email).