State Report: 10 Patients Put At Risk At Svmc Problems Have Been Resolved; One Couple Suing Over Care

With effort, Linda Walks can pull the names of her grown children out of her head. But she cannot remember that one daughter is living with her.

She can’t recall that there’s a coffee pot on the stove. She doesn’t recognize her lawyer.

Her husband, David, attributes her loss of short-term memory to poor care given at the Silver Valley Medical Center emergency room in April 1996.

Last week, the Wallace couple filed a malpractice suit in 1st District Court against the hospital and Dr. Chris Christensen.

“She’s permanently brain-damaged, that’s the bottom line,” said Bruce Owens, the Walks’ attorney.

According to an Idaho Health and Welfare Department investigation, Walks was among 10 patients put at risk in the Silverton hospital’s emergency room because medical staff was inadequate.

Those problems have been resolved, said John Hathaway, chief of the state’s Bureau of Facilities Standards, so people now can be confident about going to the SVMC emergency room.

Responding to complaints, the bureau looked into the care of 29 people last spring. Investigators concluded that “Patients did not receive adequate medical screenings, nursing staff and others were unaware of hospital policies and procedures, physician on-call schedules were inadequate, and patients (including two with unstable medical conditions) were not seen and/or treated by a physician in the emergency room.”

SVMC can’t afford to pay a doctor to staff its emergency room. Instead, doctors are called in as needed.

Now, two doctors share the duties and the emergency room is open from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. When Linda Walks’ epileptic seizure sent her there, it was open 24 hours a day. Christensen was the only doctor.

Linda Walks, now 52, went into a seizure about 3 a.m. Her husband gave her oxygen. When that didn’t help, he called the ambulance. He told the crew he wanted her taken to Shoshone Medical Center in Kellogg, where her doctor works.

But paramedics said they had to take her to SVMC, which was 10 minutes closer, because her condition was unstable. They called the hospital to make sure a doctor would be there. A nurse called Christensen, ultimately talking with him three times.

Apparently, everyone thought the doctor was on his way.

The doctor ordered medications for Walks, but didn’t make it in to see her during the one hour she was at SVMC. Last week, standing in the emergency room, Christensen said he had been too sick that night to get out of bed. He insisted it made no difference to the care Walks received.

“She got absolutely the best treatment she could’ve gotten whether there had been a doctor here or not,” he said.

In his response to the state investigation, hospital administrator David Hughes wrote, “All measures of the ER staff clearly heroic. Net result is patient survived with no neuro impairment.”

In an interview, Hughes clarified that he meant Walks had not been brain-damaged because of anything that happened at SVMC.

Attorney Owens said he will prove otherwise. Standard medical protocol wasn’t followed, he said, so Linda Walks’ brain was deprived of oxygen and she will never be the same.

Walks was taken that morning from SVMC to Shoshone Medical Center where, David Walks said, a doctor was waiting at the door.

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