Healthcare Compliance Perspective – Death of a Resident:
The Compliance Officer should review the policies and procedures with the Human Resource Manager and the Compliance Committee to ensure that all new agency nursing staff working in the facility receive orientation training. All staff including agency staff should receive in-service training on the protocol for operating all lifts being used to move and transport residents-including the prescribed number of staff required to do so. The Compliance Officer will meet with Nursing Staff to develop and implement an audit to verify that training of agency staff is being done.
The suit seeks damages against a staffing agency and the nursing aide the agency placed who provided care for the woman.
The suit alleges that the aide was negligent when he transferred the resident using a tub lift chair to the bathtub without the required assistance of another staff person. In the process of transferring the resident from her wheelchair to the bathtub, the resident fell out of the lift and suffered numerous fractures to her lower body that led to her death a week later.
The aide is accused of failing “to follow the bathing and mechanical lift procedures and failing to implement safe resident handling and safety rules.” The Department of Health’s investigation found that the aide also removed the strap securing the resident in the lift while she was still several feet in the air.
The staffing agency is accused of “breaching the legal duties it owed to the resident to use reasonable care in the management and supervision of its employee.” The agency has not responded to inquiries made about the lawsuit.
The nurse aide’s attorney said, “The information contained in the complaint paints an incomplete picture of what happened and that the aide is innocent of the charges in the complaint.”
The resident’s family spokesperson commented, “We knew (her death) would come at some point in time, but we didn’t expect it to come the way it did, and for her to have to suffer the way she suffered.
