Palos Nursing Home Resident's Family Awarded $5.5M In Power Outage Death

PALOS HEIGHTS, IL — A jury has awarded the largest judgment involving a nursing home in Illinois state history after the family of a former resident of a nursing facility in Palos Heights received $5.5 million, attorneys announced on Wednesday.

The family of Bettye Patterson filed suit against Providence Operations, which operated Providence Palos Heights and Rest Haven Iliana Christian Convalescent Home, where Patterson lived in 2016. The $5.5 million judgment was awarded to the family after Patterson died in October 2016 following a power outage that caused the 80-year-old woman’s oxygen machine to stop working.

Patterson entered the former Palos Heights facility in June 2016 to receive specialized care for various medical conditions with a life expectancy of three to six months, attorneys from the law firm of Malman Law said in a news release. Doctors at the facility determined that Patterson’s condition required her to receive supplemental oxygen through a nasal cannula 24 hours a day, seven days a week, attorneys said.

On Oct. 16, 2016, Patterson’s daughters visited and discovered a power outage in their mother’s room. With no power, Patterson was not receiving oxygen and was in medical distress, the law firm said. Her daughters searched for a nurse to assist their mother, but no trained staff could be found.

Doctors told the family that the final 20 minutes of Patterson’s life were agonizingly painful, and physiologically the experience would be equivalent to drowning.

"The pain and suffering my mother endured in the last twenty minutes of her life was excruciating," Patterson’s daughter, Kim Triplett, said in a news release. "Our family trusted Providence Care Facility to provide the best care possible for our mother, not cause her death."

Attorneys for the family argued that the defendant failed to protect Patterson from neglect and to provide appropriately supervised nursing care to meet Patterson’s needs, resulting in her wrongful death, the law firm said.

Before the case headed to the jury, the defendant admitted liability and that their negligence caused Patterson’s death, and the jury awarded the Estate of Bettye Patterson a $5.5 million verdict for Patterson’s pain and suffering, as well as the family’s grief, sorrow, mental suffering and their loss of society, the firm said.

“The unfortunate truth is 94 percent of our country’s nursing homes don’t meet minimum staffing guidelines, putting profits over people,” said Steve Malman, founder of Malman Law. “We are proud to have obtained this compensation for Bettye’s family and we hope this verdict demonstrates the significant need for improvement in staffing and training in the nursing home industry.”

Patterson is survived by her husband of 50 years, two sons and three daughters, and their families.