| Tacoma, WA - Tuesday, May 30, 2006 |
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Doctor says hospital should have saved his wife
M. ALEXANDER OTTO; The
News Tribune Had she received the emergency surgery she needed, he contends, she would have been home in Gig Harbor with him and their two sons in no time, and soon back to doing volunteer work with the homeless. Instead, according to the lawsuit Phillips filed recently against the Franciscan Health System, owner of Tacoma’s St. Joseph Medical Center, his wife’s condition was mishandled, leading to her death March 20. “This is the most devastating shock I have ever had in my life,” Phillips said last week. The 56-year-old anesthesiologist has worked at St. Joseph for more than 11 years and still works at a Franciscan facility in Federal Way. Franciscan declined to comment on the suit. “It’s our policy not to comment on proposed or actual litigation,” spokesman Gale Robinette said. “Life was lost, and for that we express our deepest sympathies to the patient’s family and friends. We always strive to provide the best care to everyone who comes to us.” Patty Phillips went to the St. Joseph emergency room March 19 with excruciating abdominal pain. Because Dr. Phillips had seen such conditions before, he said he was certain his wife was experiencing a bowel infarction, which means a section of the small intestine had died and needed to be removed. That called for an emergency operation, Phillips contends. Bowel infarctions “should be jumped on like a heart attack,” he said. Phillips said his wife should have had an imaging study that would have confirmed the bowel problem and led to immediate surgery. Also, he alleges in his suit, her doctor should have been told about the catatonic states she’d slipped into twice March 19 because they were warning signs she was becoming sicker. Most important, Phillips says in the suit, he repeatedly asked hospital staff to give his wife potassium because she was at grave risk for cardiac arrest. None of that happened, he says. WHAT RECORDS SHOW According to Phillips, his wife spent hours in a bed without standard monitoring machines in a storage area outside St. Joseph’s radiology unit. By 7 p.m. March 19, according to her chart, she was “clammy to (the) touch” and her temperature was dropping. She was “looking at (the) ceiling, eyes fixed, not responding” and her respiration was shallow. Her heart stopped shortly thereafter. She was 55, a marathon runner and a triathlete. A review of doctors’ and nurses’ notes for March 19 show Patty Phillips’ scheduled bowel study had been postponed until the next day. The record also shows Dr. Raheela Sadiq, the doctor overseeing her care, was told about the postponement. But there’s no clear indication she was told about the first catatonic state at 4 p.m. Sadiq ordered potassium be added to Phillips’ intravenous fluid, but the record doesn’t show it was given. The record also shows 25 minutes elapsed before Sadiq was informed Phillips’ heart had stopped, though resuscitation efforts started before then. The lawsuit blames hospital staff members for the death, alleging negligence. John Christensen, the lawyer representing Terry Phillips and his two sons, 18 and 21, said the hospital is trying to pin the blame on Sadiq, alleging she did not take action regarding the first catatonic state. Sadiq’s lawyer, Steve Fitzer, said she was never told about it. Sadiq did not respond to an interview request by The News Tribune. Christensen said that if an employee is found at fault in the death, Franciscan will be held liable for damages. The suit doesn’t mention a dollar amount, but similar cases have resulted in millions of dollars changing hands. If blame is pinned on someone who wasn’t an employee, such as Sadiq, then Franciscan would be less liable, Christensen said. He sees cOMBINATION OF ERRORS Phillips said he doesn’t doubt St. Joseph strives to do a good job. He counts many doctors there as friends and among the best in the business. “I don’t have it in for St. Joe’s,” he said. “I really like the place; I’ve always taken my family there.” He sees what happened to his wife as a combination of the kind of small errors that happen in medicine all the time, but that usually are isolated events that don’t cause many problems. “Occasionally, all the bad things come together,” Phillips said. He is angry, though, that the potassium he is sure would have prevented his wife’s heart from stopping was not given. He’s angry, too, that he wasn’t kept informed about what was going on and for other lapses he alleges. Perhaps his deepest anger is at how he says St. Joseph handled the aftermath of his wife’s death. Her brain had been destroyed by lack of oxygen due to the cardiac arrest. Doctors eventually restarted her heart, but by then it was too late. On March 20, Phillips had his wife removed from life support. The autopsy found 20 inches of dead bowel. Not soon after, he said, he got a call from St. Joseph saying everything that could have been done for his wife had been. The hospital’s own chart review had proved it, he was told. “Right off the bat, that was a red flag,” he said. “I’ve done a lot of chart reviews. (They) take weeks.” He started investigating. “If I had been a layperson, there is no way in the world I would have known what had happened to her,” he said. “Their explanation sounded so good.” ‘A LITTLE DIFFERENT ATTITUDE’ Phillips thought something wasn’t right when he left his wife at St. Joseph. But he hadn’t slept for several days and knew he needed rest. He said he gave staff members the benefit of the doubt when they told him, “You’re worrying too much. She’ll be OK. We are taking good care of her.” And, Phillips said, “things were too crazy in the ER” that day to throw “a hissy fit” to make sure his wife got proper care. “Boy, am I sad I did not do that,” he said. Phillips said he sued because sometimes the only way to get the attention needed to improve things is to hit hospitals in the pocketbook. “I have a little different attitude about malpractice” than most doctors, he said.
Originally published: May 29th, 2006 01:00 AM (PDT) |