FAILURE TO RECOGNIZE C. DIFF IN ORANGE COUNTY

In this case, our client was admitted to a nursing home for rehabilitation following a hip fracture and surgery. On admission to the nursing home, she was prescribed a broad-spectrum antibiotic which was widely recognized as significantly increasing her risk of a clostridium difficile (C. Diff.) infection.

During the course of her short nursing home stay, our client developed obvious signs of a C. Diff. infection, including loose stools and a significantly elevated white blood cell count. Despite the obvious signs of significant infection, the physician, nurse practitioner and nursing home staff failed to transport our client to the hospital for necessary, emergency treatment. When our client was finally transported to the hospital at the insistence of her 90 year-old husband, it was too late and she died in the Emergency Department of the hospital.

Our elders deserve appropriate medical and nursing home care, and our client did not deserve to have his beloved wife stolen from him by a C.Diff infection, which is a completely and easily preventable complication of a routine surgery. Had anyone at the nursing home, including the doctor and his nurse practitioner, paid any attention to her signs and symptoms, this wonderful woman would not have died.