A lawsuit accusing a Hammond hospital of negligent care including failure to change medical tubing and letting bedsores become infected, has been transferred to the U.S. District Court in Hammond.
The suit claims that Select Specialty Hospital, a long-term acute care center located inside St. Margaret Mercy Hospital, failed to properly care for Aubrey Rawlins, who stayed there from April 22, 2005, to June 14, 2005, when he was recovering from pneumonia.
Rawlins' stay was supposed to last just two weeks but extended to six when his health became worse, according to the lawsuit.
He was eventually moved to another hospital and eventually died, although the lawsuit does not say when. His wife, Sarah Rawlins, filed the suit on his behalf in the U.S. District Court in Chicago, but the judge transferred it to Hammond because she said the court lacked jurisdiction.
Sarah Rawlins, of Markham, Ill., says in the lawsuit that Select made numerous errors, including giving her husband aspirin and Tylenol when he was on an anticoagulant, a drug combination that caused rectal bleeding. That led to two surgeries and several blood transfusions because he had lost so much blood, the lawsuit says.
Nurses failed to turn him, and he developed bed sores that went all the way to the bone, according to the lawsuit. Rawlins' arm and genitals started to swell a month into his stay, and his wife discovered his catheter hadn't been changed since his admission three weeks before, Sarah Rawlins says in the suit. When he was moved to another hospital, he was diagnosed with having a staph infection in his bedsores and lungs, according to the lawsuit.
Other charges blame hospital employees with leaving dirty linen and clothes on his room's floor and at one point failing to hang a glucose bag, which caused Rawlins, who had diabetes, to become semi-comatose.
Sarah Rawlins has also filed a charge with the Indiana Patient Compensation Fund. According to its Web site, one doctor found evidence to support malpractice although two others found against malpractice.
The case is still open.
Sarah Rawlins is asking for a jury trial and compensation for her husband's pain and suffering.
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