Posted on Sun, May. 11, 2008
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Miss. Supreme Court to hear hospice overdose case
By HOLBROOK MOHR
Associated Press Writer
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JACKSON, Miss. --
After 66-year-old Ersel Allen was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and admitted to a hospice, she was dead within weeks.The problem is, according to autopsy results and attorneys for her family, Allen never had cancer. She died of an overdose.
Allen's family won a $4.5 million award in 2006 after suing Dr. William Causey and Hospice Ministries in Ridgeland. The hospice settled. Causey, who is in prison for child molestation, is appealing the verdict.
"This woman was not terminally ill. She was put to sleep," said Philadelphia attorney Dan Mars, who is representing Allen's family.
Ray McNamara, Causey's attorney, acknowledges that Allen did not have cancer, but said she suffered from other ailments.
The Mississippi Supreme Court was scheduled to hear the case Tuesday, but that was postponed when a faulty sprinkler system flooded the court building.
A former district attorney investigated Allen's death, but apparently abandoned the investigation when Causey was charged in Louisiana with molesting a 13-year-old boy.
"They didn't do anything because (the doctor) would never get out of prison, anyway," said Allen's daughter, Reitha Sanders.
Causey was convicted in 2005 and sentenced to 25 years for molesting the boy.
Hospice experts agree that Allen's case is different.
"Certainly a case like this garners sensational headlines, but it's not the norm," said Todd Sitzman, past president of the American Academy of Pain Medicine and the director of advanced pain therapy at Forrest General Cancer Center in Hattiesburg.
"Unfortunately a case like this makes palliative care suspect," he said.
Accusations that hospices or their employees have given overdoses to patients date back years. Most of the allegations were determined to be unfounded.
Two employees of Sanctuary Hospice House in Tupelo were indicted last month on misdemeanor charges related to neglect and practicing medicine without a license. The relatives of several people claim their loved ones were given lethal does of morphine. Dr. Paul White, the hospice medical director, and clinical director Margaret Lehman, say they are innocent and will be vindicated along with the facility.
In 1998, a panel of doctors found there was no evidence to support claims by a medical examiner in Volusia County, Fla., that at least five patients from two hospices were killed with lethal doses of morphine. A grand jury in Oregon declined to indict a nurse accused of giving lethal doses of morphine to four patients at a nursing home who died from 1987-1998.
