By Douglass Dowty
syracuse.com
SYRACUSE, N.Y. — Virginia Hickey’s oxygen levels were dangerously low when an ambulance rushed her to St. Joe’s emergency room in November 2022, her family says.
The 70-year-old Auburn woman then waited for nearly two days, most of the time languishing in a gurney along a hospital wall, until her condition deteriorated to the point she was placed on a ventilator, her family said.
Despite emergency surgery, Hickey died a week later from complications from heart failure.
Now, her family has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against St. Joseph’s Hospital Health Center.
“If my mother would have received the emergency care she needed upon her arrival to St. Joe’s, I believe she would still be alive,” one of her daughters, Angelina Ware, told syracuse.com. “No one gave her the care she needed and it killed her.”
Hickey’s case highlights the plight of so-called “boarders” inside emergency rooms: patients who are admitted to the hospital then wait hours — and sometimes days — for an open bed upstairs.
It’s not that Hickey was completely ignored: in fact, staff performed an array of tests within half an hour of her arrival at St. Joe’s ER.
But, her family says, staff did not notice how badly her health was deteriorating over the following days until it was too late.
St. Joseph’s Hospital Health Center is one of two Syracuse hospitals that has struggled with some of the longest ER wait times in the nation, especially for patients who need a hospital bed.
In the past year, St. Joe’s has added a new flex unit for patients like Hickey to get better care while awaiting a bed upstairs.
Still, the hospital’s average ER wait time was more than five hours in 2023. Boarded patients averaged a 13.5-hour wait.
Those are actually improvements over 2022 when Hickey went to St. Joe’s. The average boarding time that year was 21 hours.
For its part, the hospital has apologized to the family for Hickey’s long wait, while defending its medical care as appropriate and timely, according to a letter from the hospital provided by the family’s lawyer.
In a statement to syracuse.com, the hospital said that it could not talk about legal matters or private patient information, but added that “providing safe and compassionate care to all patients is our top priority.”
No call button, no food
Hickey is survived by three daughters, nine grandchildren and two great-grandchildren, her family said. She worked for a plastics company before taking a job at Dickman Farms, in Auburn.
“She loved flowers,” Ware said. She would often meet up with her mom to go shopping, one of Hickey’s favorite pastimes.
Hickey lived independently at Schwartz Towers, in Auburn, before her death, family said.
She arrived by ambulance to St. Joe’s around 10 p.m. on Monday, Nov. 7, 2022 after vomiting and having other symptoms of low oxygen levels. She had a history of heart problems.
She remained in the ER, hooked up to oxygen, until she was placed on a ventilator around 4 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 9 , after her organs started failing, Ware said.
Hickey had picked St. Joe’s due to its reputation for cardiac care, her family said. She’d had heart valve surgery at St. Joe’s more than a decade ago.
The care started out well upon her arrival at 10:38 p.m.: Hickey underwent a “significant number of tests in a proper manner” within half an hour, the lawsuit states.
“But then the decedent sat in the Emergency Medicine Department for nearly two days with worsening signs and symptoms,” according to the lawsuit, filed by Syracuse medical malpractice attorney Robert Lahm. “There were no nurses to see her and if they saw her, they did nothing.”
The family said Hickey received virtually no attention, and her daughters ended up switching her oxygen tanks and taking her to the bathroom on multiple occasions.
There was no call button on Hickey’s hallway bed, making it impossible for her to get help without her family’s assistance. Staff forgot to feed her at least one meal, family said.
Things were so bad that another one of Hickey’s daughters, Kimberly Tanner, said she asked St. Joe’s to have her mother transferred by ambulance to Upstate for care. But St. Joe’s said that Hickey was technically an admitted patient — even though she was boarded in the ER — and would get a bed upstairs when one was available, Tanner said.
Sometime during her first 12 hours in the ER, Hickey was taken out of a private triage room and left to wait on a gurney in a drafty common area near the ambulance entrance, Tanner said.
When Tanner arrived shortly before noon the second day, Hickey was still in a thin hospital gown near the entrance, as cold November wind blew in.
“She was cold, so I started yelling and telling them that she needed to be moved,” Tanner said. “They stated that they did not have any room, (so) they moved her to the wall facing away from them.”
Hickey had no call bell to alert nurses she needed help. She had had no food since arriving the night before, and she’d soiled herself because she could not use the bathroom on her own, her daughter said.
Hickey would remain on a gurney in the hallway for more than 24 hours longer, Tanner said.
St. Joe’s: ‘We do apologize’
Around 4 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 9 , Hickey’s condition worsened to the point she was placed on a ventilator and finally moved to a bed in a hospital room, Tanner said.
A heart surgeon, Dr. Zhandong Zhou, first saw Hickey in person the following morning — more than two days after her arrival, her family said. He determined that she was not getting enough oxygen and needed emergency heart valve surgery.
That surgery didn’t take place until Friday, Nov. 11, according to the lawsuit. By then, Hickey’s condition had progressed to the point she had partial organ failure, according to the lawsuit. She died after another week in the intensive care unit.
Lahm accused St. Joe’s of waiting too long to save Hickey’s life.
“The window of opportunity closed simply due to the negligence, carelessness and benign neglect in the Emergency Medicine Department,” the lawyer wrote in the lawsuit.
In response to the family’s complaints, St. Joe’s did an internal review soon after Hickey’s death.
In January 2023, the hospital shared its findings in a letter that the family provided to syracuse.com. In it, the hospital defended its medical care, while apologizing for the long ER wait.
The internal review determined that “evaluations and consultations by physicians” were done in a timely manner and Hickey’s vital signs were appropriately checked, St. Joe’s wrote.
However, St. Joe’s acknowledged one of the family’s primary charges: that Hickey was boarded in an ER hallway while awaiting a hospital bed upstairs. She had no call bell to alert staff to her needs.
“We do apologize for the extended time Virginia spent in hallway beds,” wrote Meghan Wright, coordinator of patient relations, in the letter to the family. “Unfortunately, a negative impact of the pandemic has been overcrowded emergency departments, forcing the use of our emergency department hallway beds.”
The hospital said it “reminded staff to provide tap bells for those in the hall beds to use to call for help when needed, including getting assistance to the bathroom.”
The letter concludes by apologizing for the family’s experience at St. Joe’s and promising to use the experience to look for opportunities to improve.
But the wrongful death lawsuit alleges that the care was so bad that it cost Hickey her life.
“Simply put, they stood by and watched the Decedent fail and regress to a level that could not be salvaged and she died of those failures,” Lahm wrote.
St. Joe’s lawyers have responded so far in court with a general denial of wrongdoing.
©2024 Advance Local Media LLC.
Visit syracuse.com.
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
