Two women at a Santa Monica, California nursing home shared a room. When one of them died, the nursing home wrongly told the other resident’s family that their loved one had died. When the resident’s son-in-law came to his mother-in-law’s nursing home room and was shown the dead body that the nursing home said was his mother-in-law’s body, he immediately knew that the deceased was not his 83-year-old mother-in-law and then saw his mother-in-law, alive, sitting up in her bed.
As he was processing the unnecessary shock and emotional turmoil he was experiencing from being incorrectly told his loved one had died and then finding her alive, a nurse at the nursing home reportedly told the son-in-law that the two roommates had been given each other’s medications for several days. The son-in-law wondered aloud whether the medications error caused or contributed to the other woman’s death: “They made a mistake. I looked at the deceased person; it’s not my mom, and my mom is sitting in the bed close to the deceased person … I was furious, when I got there I was very upset … the lady that passed away, that could have caused her death. They were saying, ‘Well, we don’t know that.'”
A statement from the nursing home, Santa Monica Convalescent Center (which is changing its name to Sunset Park Healthcare), reportedly admitted the error and stated: “It’s unfortunate human error. It was an isolated incident, and the facility obviously feels very badly for the family. These are electronic medical records … What happened is, the nurse pulled the chart for the wrong patient.”
U.S.News reports that Santa Monica Convalescent Center is a small facility with 41 beds and is a for-profit, corporately-owned nursing home. ElderGuide states, “Santa Monica Convalescent Center I is a small nursing home located in Santa Monica, California. This is not a bad facility with a C overall grade. This grade is right in line with the city grade in Santa Monica. This facility seems to have a few things going for it. This place is better in some categories than others, but it did not have any poor grades in any of the major areas discussed below.”
If you or a loved one suffered injuries (or worse) while a resident of a nursing home in California or in another U.S. state due to a nursing home fall, nursing home aspiration, nursing home neglect, nursing home negligence, nursing home abuse, nursing home under-staffing, or the nursing home failing to properly care for a vulnerable adult, you should promptly find a nursing home claim lawyer in California or in your state who may investigate your nursing home claim for you and file a nursing home claim on your behalf or behalf of your loved one, if appropriate.
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