Lawsuit against a Kansas City hospital alleges Lee’s Summit man died of treatable wound
A Lee’s Summit woman has filed a lawsuit against University Health, formerly Truman Medical Center, alleging her husband died of a preventable injury that developed while he was admitted to the nursing facility in December 2022.
The lawsuit, filed last Tuesday in Jackson County Court by Sara Jones, alleges hospital staff did not adequately care for her husband’s developing ulcer during his long-term admission in 2022.
The suit also turns a broader eye to hospital procedures, alleging that various cost-cutting measures throughout University Health led to short-staffing on shifts where nurses should have been looking after Jones’ husband.
Dan Jones, who had dementia and Parkinson’s Disease, was admitted to University Health in June 2022. He was bedridden throughout his stay and developed a sore on his tailbone sometime between June and August, according to the lawsuit.
The sore developed into a stage four pressure ulcer by October, according to medical records cited in the lawsuit. Stage four is the most severe form of ulcer, where the injury has set into the muscle. According to the lawsuit, Dan Jones’ wound was resistant to three forms of antibiotics by October 2022.
The lawsuit alleges that because Dan Jones was bedridden, he was susceptible to further injury caused by pressure on the wound. However, nursing staff at University Health allegedly did not assess Jones’ risk of pressure injuries and did not care adequately for the ulcer, according to the lawsuit.
He died on December 19, 2022.
In the lawsuit, Sara Jones alleges that nurses should have been turning and repositioning her husband every two hours, as well as providing him with a special bed designed to alleviate pressure. The lawsuit states Sara Jones would have liked nurses at University Health to have deeper knowledge of how to control infections, but does not detail what procedural knowledge was missing in Dan Jones’ care.
“The Facility [University Health] did not have an adequate number of staff working daily at the Facility to meet Resident’s needs, perform the interventions required to prevent Resident’s avoidable pressure injury or monitor and adequately supervise Resident’s condition,” the lawsuit reads.
Sara Jones also argues that some of the responsibility for her husband’s death falls onto hospital administrators for not catching potential lapses in his care plan. The lawsuit argues that in admitting Jones, Truman violated its duty not to admit patients it could not care for or heal.
“At no point while [Dan Jones] was a resident at the Facility did any of the Facility management… ever implement the appropriate policies and procedures at the Facility regarding the assessment, prevention, use of interventions, monitoring, and reporting of pressure injury/injuries,” the lawsuit reads.
More than 60,000 people die of complications related to a pressure ulcer every year in the United States, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.
Attorneys for Sara Jones were not immediately available for comment.
A representative for University Health said that the hospital system has not yet been served with the suit, and that University Health does not comment on pending legal matters.
“University Health has a long history of providing quality care to our patients, and takes any concerns or problems from a patient or family member very seriously,” said University Health spokesperson Keith King.
Sara Jones and her attorneys are seeking a jury trial. She will next appear in court on April 16, 2025, for a case management conference.
