88-year-old Fred Hodnett was a patient at a Pittsylvania County nursing home operated by three entities—Medical Facilities of America, Inc., Medical Facilities of America LIII (53) L.P., and Gretna Health Care Center II, L.P. (“Defendants”). The administrator of Fred Hodnett’s estate alleged that the Defendants’ medical staff was negligent in their care of Hodnett, leading to significant pressure ulcers during his roughly eight-month stay at the nursing home and furrther alleged that the medical staff negligently failed to test Hodnett’s stool for an infection—clostridium difficile (“C. diff.”). Ultimately, due to the combination of the bed sores and the infection, Hodnett developed sepsis and passed away in June 2014.
A Virginia nursing home wrongful death lawsuit was filed on behalf of the Estate. On the first day of trial, the trial court
struck the Estate’s standard of care expert witness and subsequently granted the Defendants’ motion for summary judgment. The administrator timely appealed.
The Court of Appeals of Virginia, in its unpublished August 27, 2024 Memorandum Opinion, stated with regard to the “knowledge requirement” for the Plaintiff’s expert (“Crawford”): “The trial court failed to give appropriate weight to the statutory presumption regarding Crawford’s knowledge of the standard of care as the evidence offered by appellees was insufficient to rebut the legal inference that Crawford’s licensure afforded her. Therefore, the trial court erred in ruling that she had not demonstrated the requisite knowledge of the applicable standard of care.”
Active Clinical Practice Requirement
“Here, Crawford testified that she had actually performed the procedures at issue during the relevant time period. She testified that she had turned and repositioned patients during her time working at Seaside. Further, she noted that, though she was technically employed as a nurse practitioner, part of her daily work regimen required that she engaged in administering medical care akin to that of a registered nurse. Crawford also testified that she “complete[d] the requests form for C. diff. testing to be sent to a lab” and that she was “familiar with the concept within the nursing home of verbal orders and written orders and issuing and following those [orders].” Crawford testified that in her experience, she would “review the orders, and many times the doctors would call [her] and give [her] verbal orders to complete.” She “would collect [the stool], if the stool was available. If not . . . [she] would talk to the nurses, instruct the nurse that was caring for that patient how to do that to make sure it was carried out properly.” Crawford’s uncontradicted testimony on this point is clear; she engaged in the medical procedures at issue in this case. That is sufficient, as a matter of law, to satisfy the “active clinical practice” requirement.”
Expert’s Employment As Nurse Practitioner
“Crawford was employed as a nurse practitioner, not a nurse, during the relevant time period. With regard to Crawford’s employment, while it is true that Crawford confirmed that she was employed as a nurse practitioner during the relevant time period, that fact is not dispositive of our analysis. As noted above, Crawford testified that her duties of care in providing patient care during this time included elements of both a nurse and a nurse practitioner. The fact that part of her care for patients involved her acting as a nurse practitioner does not negate the fact that another part of her experience involved her acting as a nurse. In testifying that part of her duties included that of a nurse and that the standard of care she testified to was applicable to both nurses and nurse practitioners alike, the requirements of Code § 8.01-581.20 were met.”
“Therefore, the trial court erred in excluding Crawford as a standard of care expert witness … Because the trial court’s decision to grant appellees’ motion for summary judgment was based on its decision to strike Clements’s standard of care expert, that decision was also error.”
Source Clements v. Medical Facilities of America, Inc., Record No. 1060-23-3.
If you or a loved one may have been injured as a result of medical malpractice in a nursing home in Virginia or in another U.S. state due to nursing home pressure ulcer (nursing home bed sore) negligence, a nursing home infection, nursing home fall, nursing home aspiration, nursing home neglect, nursing home negligence, nursing home abuse, nursing home understaffing, or the nursing home otherwise failing to properly care for a vulnerable adult, you should promptly find a Virginia medical malpractice lawyer, or a medical malpractice lawyer in your state, who may investigate your nursing home medical malpractice claim for you and represent you or your loved one in a nursing home medical malpractice case, if appropriate.
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