A wrongful death lawsuit against a Des Moines hospital alleges a pattern of failing to stabilize and provide timely treatment for emergency room patients.
The estate of the late Stephen Liker of Ankeny is suing Central Iowa Hospital Corp., which does business as UnityPoint Health-Des Moines Iowa Methodist Medical Center; Advanced Registered Nurse Practitioner Addie Hinson, and Registered Nurse Ashley Onken.
According to the lawsuit, Liker was taken to the hospital on the morning of Jan. 8, 2024, by ambulance, with paramedics reporting he had elevated blood pressure. He was admitted to the hospital a few minutes before noon and was triaged by Onken by 12:17 p.m.
The lawsuit claims Onken did not screen Liker for a stroke and failed to perform a focused neurological examination. At 12:23 p.m., Hinson allegedly ordered lab tests for Liker but did not examine him while he was in the emergency room.
“No other provider would examine Stephen for approximately seven hours while he decompensated in the emergency department due to acute stroke,” the lawsuit claims. “While waiting in the IMMC emergency department, Stephen was increasingly losing feeling on his left side, which was reported to IMMC staff on multiple occasions.”
A nurse allegedly performed the first neurological examination of Liker at 6:54 p.m., almost seven hours after his arrival at the hospital. The examination documented that Liker was “experiencing stroke-like symptoms, specifically left-sided weakness and slurred speech,” the lawsuit claims.
The hospital staff failed to provide a prompt medical screening examination to determine whether Liker had an emergency medical condition that required immediate intervention, the lawsuit alleges, adding that Liker “succumbed to his injuries and died at Iowa Methodist Medical Center on Jan. 17, 2024.”
Past violations cited by estate’s attorneys
To support the wrongful-death claim against Iowa Methodist, lawyers for Liker’s estate allege Central Iowa Hospital Corp. has been cited for a series of violations related to the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, which requires hospitals to promptly assess and stabilize emergency-room patients.
Among the violations and other incidents alleged by the estate:
February 2017 — CIHC was cited after an EMTALA investigation resulted in state inspectors concluding it was not operating in compliance with federal regulations. This violation was deemed significant enough that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services found that hospital patients were in immediate jeopardy.
September 2022 — CIHC was cited again after an EMTALA investigation
August of 2023 – The condition of Amanda Kuhlman, 45, allegedly deteriorated in the IMMC emergency department’s waiting room while suffering from a pulmonary embolism that precipitated cardiovascular collapse and her death. “She was not examined by a medical provider for nearly 10 hours, and only after she went into cardiac arrest in the IMMC emergency department waiting area,” the lawsuit alleges.
November 2023 — CIHC was cited again after an EMTALA investigation.
June 2024 — CIHC was cited for several violations after another EMTALA investigation, with some of those violations tied to “the failure to care for Stephen Liker,” the lawsuit claims.
“Central Iowa Hospital Corp. has engaged in a persistent pattern of conduct of failing to provide emergency medical care within the standard of care due to extensive delays for emergency medical care, poor staffing practices, and inappropriate triage of seriously ill patients in its Des Moines area emergency departments, and more specifically, in the IMMC emergency department,” the lawsuit claims. “For years, CIHC has been on notice of their deficient and unsafe staffing practices, with CIHC nurses complaining about said practices, while CIHC refuses to increase staffing to provide care to patients within the standard of care.”
The lawsuit accuses Hinson, Onken and the hospital of medical malpractice and wrongful death and also accuses the hospital of corporate negligence.
A spokesperson for the hospital said Monday that “UnityPoint Health–Des Moines does not comment on the specifics of pending lawsuits out of respect for the privacy of our patients and their families.”
However, the spokesperson added, “the allegations set forth in this lawsuit are just that — allegations. We have defended similar allegations brought by this same law firm in two recent cases and those allegations in both cases have been dismissed in federal court. We intend to vigorously defend the allegations set forth in this new lawsuit through the same legal channels.”
Hospital: Lawsuit ‘calculated to stoke media attention’
Originally filed in state court, the case was recently transferred to federal court. In its response to the original petition, the hospital argued the lawsuit included “inflammatory” information and sought to “inject specific alleged facts and conclusions regarding care provided to other patients on prior dates completely unconnected” from the Liker case.
“This appears to be a strategy calculated to stoke media attention and publicity and cast the involved providers and hospital in a negative light, rather than provide a short and plain statement of the plaintiffs’ claims based on the care provided to Mr. Liker,” the hospital argued. “Indeed, some of the prior cases mentioned, notably involving the same law firm, have previously been the subject of media attention.”
Lawyers for Liker’s estate argued that the hospital’s efforts to have the lawsuit resubmitted without some of the questioned information was part of a strategy to “eliminate punitive damages in this case” as well as the claim for corporate negligence.
“The defendants’ desire to be shielded from negative media publicity is a non-legal concern unrelated to the pleading requirements of the Iowa Rules of Civil Procedure,” the estate’s lawyers argued.
