Two residents admitted to Alden Town Manor Rehab and Health Care Center in Cicero, Illinois were the victims of severe medication errors that could have easily proven fatal.
The first resident was admitted to the Alden Town Manor Rehab with end stage renal disease, diabetes, and hypertension. The resident was prescribed Heparin, a blood thinning agent. Instead, due to a medication error, he was injected with another drug causing his blood glucose level to plummet. The resident became cold, clammy, and lethargic according to the nurse’s report. He was rushed to a nearby Cicero hospital where he eventually recovered after a stay in the Intensive Care Unit.
The second resident who was a victim of medication errors in the Alden Town Manor Rehab and Health Care Center was being treated for a simple urinary tract infection. The resident was prescribed 250mg of Macrobid 2 times a day for an 8-day cycle. Again the nursing home was unable to reliably provide the medication to the resident consistently. Luckily, the errors were recognized before the issue escalated.
Innovative nursing homes and hospitals have developed a number of techniques for ensuring that each nursing home resident be given his or her assigned medications. In some facilities, pictures of each resident are included in each resident’s medication tray. Other facilities require a barcode scan verification for each medication and resident.
Clearly, the administration at Alden Town Manor Rehab is not doing what is necessary to prevent medication errors happening inside the nursing home. While these two incidents ended without a tragedy occurring, there’s no guarantee that any steps have been taken to ensure that these errors don’t happen again.
If you have a loved one who has suffered because of a medication error at Alden Town Manor or any other Illinois nursing home, contact my law offices for a free and confidential evaluation of your case.
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