Jury awards family $5.5 million in death of mom who went without supplemental oxygen at Palos Heights nursing home
A jury has awarded a $5.5 million verdict against a former Palos Heights nursing home in the death of a woman who lost her supplemental oxygen when power went out in her room.
Eighty-year-old Bettye Patterson died in Providence Palos Heights in 2016 after, her family said, she had broken her hip the previous winter.
Patterson suffered from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and was on oxygen through a nasal cannula continuously, the lawsuit by her survivors stated.
When her daughters visited one Sunday, they discovered a power outage in her room, and alerted a nurse.
But the facility was understaffed and undertrained for how to respond, and Patterson went 20 minutes struggling to breathe before she died, according to the plaintiff’s attorney, Steve Malman.
“I was devastated with grief,” said Kim Triplett, one of Patterson’s daughters. “She shouldn’t have passed the way she did.”
Patterson and her husband gave their children a strict upbringing on the South Side of Chicago. “She was determined that we would have a better life,” Triplett said.
The nursing home was operated, the lawsuit stated, by Rest Haven Illiana Christian Convalescent Home, doing business as Providence Life Services. Federal tax records show it was a tax exempt, not-for-profit that reported $64 million in revenue in 2021.
Defense attorneys did not immediately return a request for comment.
The nursing home has since closed, Malman said, and the award is subject to change after post-trial requests.
