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 from happening inside the facility. 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.
One of our core beliefs is that nursing homes are built to fail due to the business model they follow and that unnecessary injuries and illnesses and wrongful deaths of residents are the inevitable result. Order our FREE report, Built to Fail, to learn more about why. Our experienced Chicago nursing home lawyers are ready to help you understand what happened, why, and what your rights are. Contact us to get the help you need.
Other blog posts of interest:
Failure to monitor anticoagulant medication at Greentree of Bradley
Resident suffers fatal injuries in fall at Alden Town Manor
Fatal medication error at Valley Hi
Fatal medication error at Mayfield Care Center
Unsafe transfer at Alden Town Manor causes hip fracture
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