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A hospital patient died after being taken off life support when staff mistakenly asked the wrong family if they wanted to pull the plug, according to a lawsuit.
David Wells was unconscious and not breathing when he was rushed in an ambulance to PeaceHealth Southwest Medical Center in Vancouver, Washington after choking on a piece of steak in August 2021.
However, he was wrongly identified as his hospital roommate, Mike Beehler, according to the lawsuit obtained by McClatchy News.
Hospital staff attempted to reach out to Wells’ family to make the tough decision to take him off life support — but instead called Beehler’s sister, Debbie Danielson, mistakingly saying that he was the one in grave condition.
“They said, ‘He’s basically brain dead,’” Danielson told KGW. “’Do you want us to keep him on life support or do you want to pull the plug?’”
Danielson said she was forced to make the “difficult choice” to end her brother’s life — only realizing they got the wrong patient when she got a phone call from her supposedly dead brother a week later.
“I said, ‘You can’t be alive. You’re dead!” Danielson recalled telling her brother.
But with the good news also came a grim reality.
“We made life-ending decisions for a person we don’t even know,” Danielson’s husband, Gary, told KGW.
PeaceHealth Southwest Medical Center had reported the death to the county medical examiner’s office, and a death notice proclaiming Beehler had died on Aug. 9 ran in the local newspaper, the suit said.
Meanwhile, Wells’ body was sent to a funeral home, who contacted Beehler’s relatives about final arrangements.
Beehler and Danielson both called the police to report the fatal mix-up, according to the lawsuit. The Clark County Medical Examiner’s Office later confirmed that it was Wells, not Beehler, who had died, and called his son to break the news.
“They basically told me there was a medical emergency regarding my father. He had been pronounced dead,” Shawn Wells told KGW.
A new death notice was published in the newspaper remembering the roommate. “David C. Wells, 69, Vancouver, died Aug. 9, 2021.”
He would not learn that strangers had determined the fate of his father for another two years when he was contacted by local news reporters.
“I’m at a loss for words how badly they handled this,” he told the outlet. “I’ll never be able to get that decision back.”
“It’s disturbing. I don’t know if I’m going to get over it. They dropped the ball so egregiously,” he added.
Shawn Wells, Beehler and Danielson are suing the hospital for negligence and causing severe emotional distress “as a direct result of (PeaceHealth’s) extreme and outrageous conduct,” the complaint says.
The three have also filed another lawsuit against American Medical Response ambulance service for misidentifying the patient, as well as All County Cremation & Burial funeral home, and the Clark County Medical Examiner’s Office for failing to disclose the error.
Both lawsuits seek an unspecified amount in damages.
