Family sues Jax hospital for $17M - Navy News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Navy Times

Family sues Jax hospital for $17M

Naval Hospital Jacksonville is facing a $17 million wrongful-death lawsuit, the latest of several malpractice cases against the Florida facility over the past several years.

The federal lawsuit, scheduled for trial in June, involves the death of Navy wife Rosario Caoile, a 58-year-old mother of two and wife of a retired sailor, who died of a brain aneurism in December 2005.

Caoile went to the hospital’s emergency room complaining of severe headaches and showing symptoms of an undiagnosed aneurism.

She died at her home a week later, never aware of her grave but treatable brain condition. That’s because hospital doctors left her MRI scan unread for five days and failed to contact her after determining she had an aneurism, said the family’s attorney, Sean Cronin of Jacksonville.

Capt. Bruce Gillingham, the hospital’s commanding officer, declined to discuss the case during a telephone interview, citing the Navy’s policy of not commenting on pending litigation.

Cronin said he has pieced together a timeline for Caoile’s final week, based on a series of videotaped depositions he took in preparation for a trial.

On Dec. 14, 2005, Caoile went to the emergency room complaining of severe migraines, nausea and sensitivity to light. Doctors performed a CT scan, but initially saw nothing abnormal and sent her home with headache medicine, Cronin said.

Later that day, a doctor reviewing the CT scan noticed an abnormality and scheduled Caoile for an MRI — a more detailed and costly test — for the following day, Cronin said. Caoile went in for the MRI on Dec. 15; she never again heard from her doctors at the naval hospital, Cronin said.

Typically, MRIs are read immediately, but Caoile’s was not, Cronin said.

“It just sat in the box for five days,” said Cronin, who filed the suit on behalf of Caoile’s widower, retired Ship’s Serviceman 1st Class Archibal Caoile. “The MRI should have been read the morning of the 15th. But the report is dated December 20.”

Caoile died Dec. 21.

The delay resulted from communication problems among the doctors working on Caoile’s case, Cronin said.

“This is a systemic failure. This represents a complete and total breakdown in continuity of care. There is no system in place at the naval hospital other than directdoctor-to-doctor communication,” Cronin said in an interview.

During videotaped depositions, one doctor said Caoile’s case “fell through the cracks,” the attorney said.

“This death was completely preventable,” Cronin said.

Since 2000, Naval Hospital Jacksonville has faced at least 26 malpractice lawsuits involving at least 15 deaths, according to Cronin and Navy Times research.

Gillingham said there is no reason to believe the care at Jacksonville is substandard. He pointed to its recent accreditation by the Joint Commission, a national evaluation board for health care facilities, both military and civilian.

“I am confident that we are meeting and exceeding the standard of care in all of our clinical areas,” Gillingham said.

Gillingham said he was unaware of any way to determine whether his hospital’s rate of accidents or malpractice lawsuits was above or below average. He said the national accreditation process is the primary yardstick for hospital performance.

He declined to discuss the details of the Caoile case but noted that his hospital has implemented a new program to improve communication between doctors. The hospital responds promptly to any systemic problems that come to light, he said.

“Communication, nationally, is one of the largest factors in adverse events that occur in hospitals,” Gillingham said. “If a situation occurs and we haven’t met our very high standards, on the basis of an internal review, we will turn those lessons around and implement specific programs.”

This year, the hospital has continued to settle malpractice lawsuits rather than take them to court and risk losing multimillion-dollar jury verdicts.

Settlements this year include:

• In January, the Navy agreed to a $750,000 settlement with the family of Betty Plato. The 76-year-old Navy wife went to the emergency room in 2005 with a bowel obstruction. Although it was accurately diagnosed at first, a second doctor changed the diagnosis to a hernia and conducted hernia-related surgery, according to a lawsuit. She died days later of an infection.

• In March, the Navy paid $800,000 in the case of Justin Michael Shantz. The family of the 3-month-old boy brought the fussy infant to the emergency room in June 2005, but doctors sent the child home after failing to diagnose his severe blood infection, according to a lawsuit. The child died about six hours later.

• In July, the Navy agreed to a $900,000 settlement in the case 8-month-old Michael Hugaboom, who died in February 2004, a week after first being seen at the hospital. Doctors there mistakenly diagnosed the child with chicken pox instead of the sepsis and meningitis infections that killed him, according to a lawsuit.