For a New York family, what began as a routine hospital visit after their 21-year-old daughter fractured her ankle ended in an unimaginable tragedy.
Dale Alice Martin died just 14 hours after arriving at Waterbury Hospital in Connecticut for treatment, despite suffering what appeared to be a relatively minor injury.
Her father, Lindsay Martin, has filed a lawsuit against the hospital, alleging that medical malpractice led to his daughter’s death, according to the Hartford Courant.
The complaint, filed by attorney Christopher Mattei of Koskoff, Koskoff & Bieder, claims that hospital staff gave Dale such a large amount of pain medication that she stopped breathing within 14 hours of being admitted.
The lawsuit alleges that no one monitored Dale during that period and that the drugs affecting her breathing also left her heavily sedated.
According to the filing, Dale was unable to summon help as she struggled to breathe. A nurse reportedly found her at about 7 a.m. on April 10, but by then, the lawsuit says, her heart had stopped.
The family says they had no idea that Dale was being taken to a hospital allegedly facing serious problems with staffing, funding and patient-care capacity.
At the time of Dale’s death, Waterbury Hospital was owned by California-based Prospect Medical Holdings, which had filed for bankruptcy three months earlier.
Dale Alice Martin, 21, died 14 hours after going to Waterbury Hospital for treatment of a broken ankle
Her father, Lindsay Martin, is suing the hospital, alleging that an excessive dose of medication caused his daughter to stop breathing
Waterbury Hospital in Connecticut was previously owned by private equity-backed Prospect Medical Holdings
Lindsay Martin said he did not know the hospital was reportedly under investigation or that nurses had allegedly been forced to buy food for patients. He also said he was unaware of claims that financial restrictions had left the facility struggling to operate safely.
Prospect Medical Holdings had operated three hospitals while pursuing profits, critics allege, even as the facilities faced staff shortages, aging equipment and little financial reserve.
Mattei said the family expects the case to reveal whether Prospect’s management played a role in the events surrounding Dale’s death.
The attorney said investigators may find that Waterbury Hospital was operating with severely depleted resources after Prospect reduced staffing and training, dismantled parts of the hospital’s infrastructure and prioritized extracting value over patient safety.
Prospect Medical Holdings no longer owns or operates the hospital. Waterbury Hospital is now under the ownership of UConn Health.
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Private equity ownership of hospitals has remained a contentious issue, with research linking such facilities to higher rates of patient falls, infections and deaths.
A study recently published in the Annals of Internal Medicine reported that patient deaths in the emergency departments of private equity-owned healthcare facilities rose by 13 percent.
A report released over the summer by Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy, following Dale’s death, accused Prospect Medical of using a “buy, strip, flip” business model that involved selling assets while cutting hospital staff.
Prospect Medical Holdings has been accused of extracting profits from the hospital while leaving it short of staff, funding and essential medical equipment
Lindsay Martin (left) said: ‘Within 14 hours of admission, providers at the hospital had administered so much pain medication that Dale stopped breathing and later died’
Dale was an organ donator. The undergraduate student of Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas reportedly also gave piano lessons disadvantaged children
Murphy even proposed a bill with Congresswoman Mary Gay Scanlon of Pennsylvania to prevent private equity firms from owning hospitals and nursing homes.
For Dale’s parents, these policies came too late.
After she was declared brain dead, medical staff tried to bring the woman back to life – without success.
Her father told the Hartford Courant: ‘For three days, we set vigil in her hospital room, listening to the beeping of the monitors and seeing the machines keep her lungs and heart moving, waiting for the expiration of the 72 hours.
‘And in that time, you know, we kept asking: “How did this happen?”‘
Doctors turned off the ventilator that the 21-year-old was hooked up to on April 13.
‘It’s incredibly difficult to wrap your head around how this can happen in a hospital that’s supposed to be a house of healing,’ her father said.
Dale was an undergraduate student at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas but taking a sabbatical to do farm work in Bethlehem.
Dale was also volunteering as a music teacher for disadvantaged children.
The Daily Mail contacted Waterbury Hospital for comment.