Doctor’s wife accused of fatal dose
Lawsuit tells of Mount Carmel nurse administering drug
An updated lawsuit in the death of a woman given an excessive dose of pain medication at Mount Carmel West hospital indicates that the nurse who administered the medication later became the third wife of the doctor who ordered it.
Mariah Baird, 26, of Orient, is accused in the document of administering a lethal dose of fentanyl to 65-year-old Jan Thomas of the Far West Side on March 1, 2015, “knowing that such dose was grossly inappropriate.”
Since Oct. 2, 2017, Baird has been married to Dr. William Husel, 43, the physician at the center of a Mount Carmel Health System investigation into 34 near-death patients who were given excessive painkiller doses, all ordered by Husel, with all but six labeled by the health system as potentially fatal.
According to Columbus attorney David Shroyer, who represents Thomas’ son, the updated complaint naming Baird was filed Tuesday afternoon in Franklin County Common Pleas Court.
A certificate from the North Carolina vital statistics office shows that Husel and Baird were married on a beach in Dare County. The Ohio Department of Health says the couple has had two children in Ohio, the first born in 2016.
Mount Carmel said that Husel, of Liberty Township in the Dublin area, was fired Dec. 5 for ordering excessive doses for 33 intensive-care patients at Mount Carmel West in Franklinton and one such patient at Mount Carmel St. Ann’s hospital in Westerville. Twentythree employees, among them nurses, pharmacists and managers, have been placed on paid leave while the health system’s investigation continues.
Husel’s medical license has been suspended and Thomas
law-enforcement agencies are investigating for possible criminal charges.
According to Ohio State Medical Board licensing documents, Husel told the board in 2013 that “my passion is taking care of sick patients in the ICU.”
The comments came in a letter related to his criminal convictions.
Among them is a 1996 guilty plea to a federal misdemeanor previously reported by The Dispatch. The plea was related to the storage in a dorm room of a pipe bomb later used to blow up an outdoor trash can at Wheeling Jesuit College in November 1994, when he was a student at the small West Virginia school.
In December 1994, Husel was arrested in Belmont County, Ohio, on charges that he broke into a car, the documents show. Belmont County is just across the Ohio River from Wheeling, where he went to college. He pleaded guilty to theft and receiving stolen property, lost a college basketball scholarship and was kicked out of school.
In the letter to the medical board asking members to excuse his criminal convictions and allow him to get a medical license, Husel said his actions were a result of being an immature, irresponsible teenager who made senseless and ill-advised decisions.
“I was given a second chance to correct a wrong, and have made every attempt to demonstrate I learned my lesson and will never make these types of mistakes again,” Husel said in the letter. “... Please give me the opportunity to do what I love doing.”
Husel now is named in at least 12 wrongful-death lawsuits filed in Franklin County. Also named in lawsuits are Mount Carmel pharmacists said to have approved dispensing excessive doses of pain medication drugs and nurses said to have administered them.
In at least one lawsuit, attorney Gregory Foliano, representing Husel, filed a motion on Tuesday asking that the case, and the sharing of evidence, be put on hold until the criminal investigation into Husel is settled. The motion also asks for an order that would prevent Husel from giving any sworn statements in the matter. Husel has a deposition under oath scheduled Friday with Shroyer.
Messages left late Tuesday for Foliano were not returned.
Among new suits filed Tuesday is one in the death of Larry Brigner, who had not previously been identified by attorneys handling the cases. The law office of Leeseberg & Valentine says Brigner died Dec. 10, 2017, five days before his 71st birthday, after receiving a high dose of fentanyl with the sedative midazolam, known as Versed.
Brigner, who was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor in June 2017, was coherent when emergency medical workers took him to Mount Carmel West, but his health declined at the hospital, according to a statement from the law firm. The firm says Husel ordered the medications when Brigner’s family decided to stop treatments, and Brigner died within 6 minutes of receiving the drugs.
The firm says Brigner died on the same shift as Janet Kavanaugh, whose daughter has filed a wrongful death lawsuit related to a high dose of fentanyl believed to have been ordered by Husel for Kavanaugh.
“We are absolutely stunned and not sure what to do or think,” Brigner’s family said in a prepared statement. “Larry was a Vietnam veteran who was courageous and dignified in battling his cancer and enduring extensive treatments, knowing that death was a possibility. After all of that, Larry then suffered a death that was as undignified as one can imagine.”
Also Tuesday, the Ohio Department of Health said Mount Carmel has submitted a correction plan in response to a warning from the federal Brigner Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services that two of its hospitals could be terminated from the Medicare program due to serious pharmaceutical-service deficiencies that constitute an immediate threat to patient health and safety.
Mount Carmel spokeswoman Samantha Irons said the plan submitted relates to Mount Carmel West and a plan for Mount Carmel St. Ann’s will be submitted soon.
The warning stems from an investigation conducted by the state Department of Health for the federal agency in the wake of Mount Carmel’s investigation, which was publicly announced on Jan. 14.
If the hospitals were to lose their federal Medicare provider status, their state Medicaid status also would be terminated, according to an Ohio Department of Medicaid spokesman. Such a loss would mean the hospitals could not care for patients who receive government-provided health insurance.
Details of the correction plans will not be made public until they are approved by the federal agency, said J.C. Benton, Department of Health spokesman.