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Bayfront sued over patient's strangulation

Recovering from a stroke, Edna Buice died in an accident involving a wheelchair restraint.

By LISA GREENE
Published March 26, 2005

ST. PETERSBURG - Edna Buice was one of only two patients in the rehabilitation unit at Bayfront Medical Center when she died of strangulation, alone, in an empty hospital room that was not her own, according to a lawsuit filed this week that accuses Bayfront of neglecting her.

Buice, 82, of St. Petersburg, died in November while she was hospitalized at Bayfront after suffering a stroke. She had been improving and expected to be home with her family by Thanksgiving.

On Nov. 7, the day she died, she had been placed in a wheelchair with a padded restraint placed around her waist. The restraint was designed to keep Buice, who was paralyzed on one side, upright in the chair. But she somehow slipped in the chair toward the floor, and the restraint caught around her neck and strangled her.

"How could someone be left alone, restrained, long enough to strangle to death?" asked her daughter, Lou Ballenger, on Friday. "It's just total and complete neglect. It's horrific. We can't even imagine what kind of death my mother suffered."

Bayfront officials would not comment on Buice's death because of the lawsuit, said hospital spokeswoman Kanika Tomalin.

"We're eager to come to resolution for both the family and the hospital," Tomalin said.

The suit also names four Bayfront employees who were involved in Buice's care. Tomalin said all four still work for Bayfront, and they also would not discuss the case. She would not say whether they or anyone else was disciplined as a result of Buice's death.

The lawsuit, filed by Buice's estate, raises several questions about Buice's care. Among them:

Whether she should have been restrained. Under hospital policy, restraints may be used only with a doctor's order, and each order is valid for 24 hours. There was no record of any such order after Nov. 2. Records of the team caring for Buice show no reason for her to be restrained, the suit says.

How Buice arrived in the vacant hospital room. Buice could move only her left foot. To get to the room where she was found, she would have had to push down a hallway, around a corner and into the room, the suit says.

"Nobody knows how she got in there," said the family's attorney, Len Milcowitz. "Either somebody put her in there and left her alone, or we are to believe she maneuvered herself into the room."

Why Buice was left alone, unsupervised, for "an extended period of time" before the accident.

Whether hospital employees responded properly when they found Buice. The employee who first spotted her in the room went to the nurse's station to say Buice was on the floor rather than immediately entering the room to help her, the suit says.

What happened to the wheelchair, restraint and any surveillance videos of the rehab unit. The suit says they are missing and may have been destroyed.

Hospital workers "basically forgot about her," Ballenger said.

"We don't want it to happen to anyone else and are raging mad that it happened to our mother," she said.

Buice could not speak because of the stroke and should have had an alarm or some other way to summon help from her wheelchair, Milcowitz said.

"When you cannot speak, you have to have an alternative method," Milcowitz said. "There are bells, there are buzzers, there are remotes."

[Last modified March 26, 2005, 01:15:24]