By Paul Woolverton
FayObserver.com
The litigation accuses the medical center of hiding the man from his family and attempting to cover up negligence.
Two lawsuits filed Wednesday allege that Cape Fear Valley Health System in Fayetteville so severely neglected a patient that he developed fist-sized bedsores and eventually died because of the poor care.
The sores were so deep that bone was visible, and one sore became so infected that his leg was amputated, the litigation says.
The lawsuits also say Cape Fear Valley attempted to cover up the negligence by trying to stop the man from transferring to another hospital. The suits allege Cape Fear Valley even hid the patient from his sons for a week in an effort to hide its actions.
The patient was 67-year-old David Edward Bryant Sr. of Clinton. Bryant was initially hospitalized for what the lawsuits say were minor injuries from a fall.
He died Feb. 5, 10 days after his family moved him from Cape Fear Valley to Duke University Hospital in Durham, the litigation says.
Neither lawsuit filed on Wednesday is a medical malpractice case. Instead, the two lawsuits call for Cape Fear Valley to turn over Bryant’s medical records and other hospital records to the lawyers representing Bryant’s estate and his two sons.
A hearing on the matter is scheduled for Thursdayafternoon.
Lawyer Walt Tippett for the Bryant family declined to comment on the litigation.
Cape Fear Valley spokesman Vince Benbenek also declined to speak on the details.
“Due to patient confidentiality and privacy issues, we prefer not to comment on specific allegations and lawsuits,” Benbenek said. “I can assure you that the 7,000 skilled professionals at Cape Fear Valley Health are committed to providing exceptional and compassionate care to all patients.”
According to the lawsuits, Bryant fell this past fall and sustained minor injuries. At the time he “was in reasonably good health” and “was a vibrant, self-sufficient person.” He began receiving treatment at Cape Fear Valley on Oct. 10. The litigation does not further describe the injuries.
A brace was put on Bryant’s leg, and it rubbed his skin, causing severe abrasions, the litigation says. It says the abrasions developed into a decubitus ulcer, also known as a pressure ulcer or bedsore.
“Due to Cape Fear’s further inattention, the ulcer developed a severe infection that left Bryant’s bones fully exposed and produced a noxious stench,” the litigation says. “After the infection irreparably ravaged Mr. Bryant’s leg, Cape Fear amputated it on November 11, 2016.”
The lawsuits say Bryant remained in the hospital and developed other bedsores because the staff did not turn and rotate him to prevent them from forming while he was immobilized.
The litigation says Bryant was frequently exposed to fecal matter because he was not provided with a colostomy bag.
Bryant was alert during this time, the litigation says, and became depressed as his condition worsened.
The litigation says Bryant’s family asked Cape Fear Valley to treat Bryant’s pressure ulcers with maggot therapy, which is the practice of using medical grade maggots to eat necrotic tissue from wounds. The hospital refused the request, the litigation says.
So one of Bryant’s sons bought medical grade fly larvae in January and tried to administer the maggots, the lawsuit says.
The lawsuits allege that on Jan. 20, a Friday, Bryant’s sister tried to visit him, but he had been moved from the hospital room where he had been treated.
“Repeated requests to several staff members revealed no information about where Mr. Bryant had been taken,” the litigation says.
The family called the police, but the hospital would not tell the Fayetteville Police Department where Bryant was, the lawsuit says, and instead told the family to take up the matter with the hospital’s legal department the following Monday.
Cape Fear Valley kept Bryant from his family even though one of his sons had medical power-of-attorney for him, the lawsuit says. The family had no information on his location, his well-being or whether he was alive, it says.
After seven days, the family hired a lawyer to try to get Cape Fear Valley to produce Bryant, the lawsuit says. During those seven days, the lawsuit says, the hospital had tried to get a court to declare that Bryant was mentally incompetent and put him under the jurisdiction of the Cumberland County Department of Social Services.
The court on Jan. 26 rejected Cape Fear’s request and Bryant was reunited with his family, the litigation says. The family had a private ambulance take him to Duke, it says.
Bryant at first appeared to improve at Duke, the litigation says, but he died 10 days later.
One of the lawsuits says Cape Fear Valley has refused to provide the Bryant family lawyers with all of Bryant’s medical records. It calls for a jury to tell Cape Fear Valley not to destroy any of Bryant’s medical records and give all of them to his family’s lawyers.
The other lawsuit challenges whether Cape Fear Valley is a private organization instead of a government-owned organization. The hospital operated as a public entity until 2006, when it converted to a private status.
This lawsuit contends hospital’s ownership and operations are still much embedded in the Cumberland County government, so it never truly converted to a private organization. The lawsuit demands copies of records that would be public if the hospital is government-owned.
And if Cape Fear Valley Health System, which has a legal name of Cumberland County Hospital System, is a government entity, it can be sued on allegations that it violated Bryant’s constitutional rights in how it treated him and in its refusal to let his family transfer him to another medical facility.
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http://www.fayobserver.com/news/20170809/lawsuits-allege-fist-size-bedsores-at-cape-fear-valley