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MALPRACTICE SUIT LEVELED AT JRMC

By Wes Clement/OF THE COMMERCIAL STAFF
Saturday, May 9, 2009 10:14 PM CDT

A malpractice suit was filed Monday against Jefferson Regional Medical Center, about 18 months after the death of 92-year-old Thomas Conner.

The suit states Conner, admitted to the hospital on Oct. 26, 2007, complained of severe abdominal pain as JRMC employee Latonia Counts administered a bedtime feeding through the patient’s feeding tube.

The plaintiff, Margie Owens, stated Conner repeatedly asked Counts to stop the feeding and she continued according to doctor’s orders. Owens and Conner’s wife, Ruth, and Conner’s granddaughter also asked Counts to stop the feeding. She did not, according to the civil suit filed at the Jefferson County Circuit Clerk’s office.

The attending physician was called. He documented aspiration of the feeding fluid that had been used; Conner was transferred to the intensive care unit where he died 36 minutes later, the suit stated.

Conner’s death certificate stated the immediate cause of death was aspiration of gastric contents.

The suit stated Conner went into respiratory distress as Counts continued feeding, and the patient’s doctor had ordered feedings to be increased earlier that day.

Jefferson Hospital Association (d/b/a JRMC), Counts, five John Does, Continental Casualty Company and five John Doe insurance companies are listed as defendants. A jury trial was requested; Judge Rob Wyatt Jr. will preside.

JRMC Marketing Director Julie Bridgforth said she and other representatives of the hospital were unable to comment.

Percutaneous endoscopic gastronomy feeding was developed in 1980; it has become the preferred method among American doctors of delivering nutrition to those who cannot eat but have a functional gastrointestinal tract, according to a Virginia Commonwealth University publication. Conner was fed through a PEG tube.

PEG-related complications are reported in up to 70% of patients who use PEG tubes; aspiration is one of the most common problems associated with tube feeding, the publication stated.

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