The wife of a former patient recently sued Eden Springs Healthcare Facility after her husband was neglected and left to die.
Eden Springs, a healthcare facility, recently came under fire in a wrongful death lawsuit filed earlier this week by the family of a former patient who died while in the care of Eden Springs. According to Isabell Hammond, her husband, Barry Hammond, was neglected “while he was in hypertensive emergency care at Eden Springs Healthcare Facility in March 2017.” As a result, she is suing Eden Springs, along with five other defendants, for at least $25,000 in damages.
What happened, though? Well, according to the suit, Hammond was “pronounced dead at ProMedica Memorial Hospital on March 12, 2017” at the age of 51. Prior to his death, Mrs. Hammond claims “Eden Springs neglected to properly care for her husband at the facility, citing neglect in not properly prescribing medication that led to him having a fatal stroke.”
This isn’t the first time the healthcare facility has come under fire. In recent months, Eden Springs has received numerous complaints about a variety of different reasons, from failing to properly care for patients to failing to pay bills on time. For example, in one incident that occurred February 18, 2018, a 74-year-old patient went missing after “leaving the nursing home alone in his electric wheelchair.” Fortunately, he was found seven hours later, but he was only partially clothed and the temperature was only 14 degrees outside. According to the Ohio State Health Department, the patient, Ronald Ritzman, “had several abrasions on his hands that were bleeding, his pants were cold and wet, and his skin was purple after being in the freezing temperatures with his body temperature dropping to 90.7 degrees.” As a result, he was admitted to a local hospital for “life-threatening hypothermia and frostbite to his lower extremities.”
Then, in November 2018, a 73-year-old patient was allegedly sexually assaulted by Tyson Lagrou. Since the incident, Lagrou was charged with the assault after a “worker at the facility witnessed the man sexually assaulting the woman in the hallway.” Despite being charged, it was “determined that Lagrou was not competent to stand trial and was placed in the care of the department of mental health and recovery board.”
Unfortunately, that wasn’t Lagrou’s first assault at the facility. According to reports, Lagrou was also investigated in April 2018 after “allegedly assaulting a 44-year-old nonverbal woman who was unable to protect herself in her room when a nurse saw Lagrou’s hand under the woman’s blanket.” A Green Springs Police report noted the patient’s “adult diaper tabs were open, but the diaper was still in place,” and no charges were filed.
As a result, Eden Springs was instructed by Assistant Sandusky County Prosecutor Mark Mulligan to set up a safety plan and advised the facility to “have more monitoring of Lagrou’s actions and to determine if it is suitable for the man to being living in the facility.”
Sources:
Family files wrongful death lawsuit against Eden Springs
Eden Springs nursing home rape suspect faced sexual battery investigation in April
Join the conversation!