ER footage provides rare timeline for upcoming medical malpractice suit, lawyer says

A rare instance of preserved waiting room footage will serve as a key piece of evidence in a medical malpractice suit filed Thursday against WellSpan York Hospital in York, Pennsylvania. 

According to the complaint filed by the estate of Terry Lynn Odoms, 72-year-old Odoms spent nearly two hours unattended in the WellSpan York Hospital emergency room waiting area without receiving care before he eventually died at the hospital. 

Related: Multiple forms of discrimination found to be prevalent in U.S. health care system

Odoms arrived at the emergency room via ambulance Aug. 16, 2019, exhibiting elevated respiration and heart rate, the complaint states. He was allegedly moved to the waiting room and left unattended without ever being seen by a nurse despite his abnormal vital signs. 

Footage from the waiting room released Thursday shows Odom, 40 minutes into his time in the emergency room, unsuccessfully gesturing from his seat in a wheelchair in an attempt to get a hospital worker’s attention. The video shows his posture slump shortly after, and he stops moving. Eventually, hospital staff finds Odom unconscious, at which point he is wheeled out of the waiting room and nurses attempt to revive him. 

He was pronounced dead about an hour later.

The complaint says that while Odom was unconscious, a staff member called out his name several times, but no one walked through the waiting room to look for him, in violation of hospital policy. He was considered “left without being seen,” and his name was removed from the emergency department tracking board. Throughout the duration of his time in the waiting room, staff passed him on 12 recorded occasions without stopping to check on him.

On Aug. 22, 23 and 30, 2019, the Pennsylvania Department of Health conducted unannounced special monitoring visits to WellSpan and obtained the waiting room footage. In October 2019, the DOH issued a report against the hospital listing a number of the hospital’s failures to comply with licensing requirements, including dangerously inadequate staffing, failure to enforce policies for assessing waiting room patients, failure to document vital signs and ensure appropriate initial assessment, failure to have a nurse or staff member walk through the waiting room to ensure a patient is gone before removing them from the tracking board, and failure to provide Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act-mandated medical screening for patient who arrived by ambulance.

According to Ross Feller Casey founding partner Matt Casey, who is representing the plaintiffs in the case, having access to video surveillance provides an edge that is uncommon in medical malpractice suits. “Customarily all you have is the paper or computerized record of a hospital visit,” which can leave much more room to question the sequence of events. 

While hospital waiting areas typically have security cameras, the footage is usually disposed of after a few months. Because the DOH conducted its investigation several days after the event, the footage was preserved and accessible to be used as evidence. 

Casey added that the footage particularly highlights discrepancies in the events and the hospital’s ensuing response. Before the DOH obtained the footage, WellSpan York Hospital president Keith Noll sent a condolence letter to Odom’s family that said Odom was “quickly seen by one of our nurses.” The plaintiffs claim that Noll sent the letter despite being aware that this was apparently not the case, and that he would not have made the same statements had he known that footage of the incident would become available. 

In an emailed statement, a WellSpan representative said, “Our hearts go out to this patient’s family. This was a tragic situation. WellSpan has conducted a top-to-bottom review of our safety and care protocols, created new care team roles and conducted rigorous trainings with our staff. We also have fully implemented all of the PA Department of Health’s recommendations. While we cannot provide additional comment given this is a pending legal matter, our focus remains on providing safe, timely and high-quality care to every patient, every time.”

The suit, filed in the York County Court of Common Pleas, accuses WellSpan of four counts of negligence and recklessness, and the action is brought under the Wrongful Death Act and the Survival Act. The case is captioned Murray v. WellSpan Health.