Dehydration death of Tennessee nursing home resident a criminal inquiry

A Knoxville, Tennessee woman died nine days after being admitted to a nursing home for care following serious injuries in a car accident.  At the time of her admission, she was being tube fed, meaning that she was entirely dependent upon the nursing home staff for food and water.  She was transferred from the nursing home to a hospital where she died.  An autopsy concluded that the cause of her death was injuries from the car accident aggravated by poor care in the nursing home after they found that the medical cause of death was dehydration.

Preventing dehydration is basic nursing care, and is something that should be relatively easy to assure in patients who are being tube-fed, seeing as the patient's nutritional needs are being provided by a tube which can provide fluids as well.  There are two basic reasons why this woman would have died from dehydration: the nursing staff was not providing the needed care or they did not know how to care the patient.  Either option is wholly unacceptable.  The woman's family has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the nursing home.

It is also interesting to note that this is happening at a time when the Tennessee nursing home industry is lobbying the legislature for caps on damages in nursing home cases.  Cases like this underline the need for substandard nursing homes to face the full scope of liability for the injuries and wrongful deaths poor nursing care causes.  If the non economic damages were capped as requested at $250,000, it is very easy for a corporatre executive in a nursing home chain to decide that they will limit staffing and training for the nursing home staff because the consequences of poor care a limited by the damages cap.  The net result of damages caps: less accountability for the nursing homes.