A resident discharged from a local hospital into the Regency Nursing Care Residence in Springfield, Illinois was readmitted to the emergency department after just two days of nursing home care.
The staff at the facility failed to properly transcribe the doctor’s orders from the hospital, and omitted an order for regular Lasix, a diuretic drug used to treat patients with congestive heart failure. As a result, the resident was never given his prescribed medications. Fortunately, the staff at Regency Nursing Care Residence noticed the patient’s distress, and notified his physician.
Alarmingly, it’s unclear how the mistake occurred. The report notes that on two prior admissions to the nursing home, Lasix was not part of the patient’s prescriptions.
This incident is different from most cases of medication errors in nursing homes. Most medication errors that take place in nursing homes involve a resident getting the wrong medication. To ensure that medications are delivered promptly and correctly, only staff members who are licensed nurses are permitted to dispense medications in a nursing home.
Before giving any medications, nurses are trained to ask a specific series of questions that constitute a defense against medication errors. Is this the right patient? The right medication? The right dosage, time, and the right means (pill, liquid, etc)? Most nursing home medication errors are a result of these questions not being asked and answered.
It’s important to recognize that the failure to deliver a prescribed medication can be as deadly as delivering the wrong medication. Luckily, in this particular case, the man recovered in the hospital.
If you have a loved one who has suffered because they were given the wrong medication, or not given their medication at all in an Illinois nursing home, contact our Chicago nursing home lawyers for a free and confidential evaluation of your case. At my law office, we can handle all aspects of your nursing home medication error case.