Mount Carmel facing 26th lawsuit in patient deaths

A 26th lawsuit was filed in Franklin County Common Pleas Court on Tuesday against Mount Carmel Health System and a former intensive-care doctor accused of ordering excessive doses of painkillers for nearly three dozen patients who died.

The suit filed on behalf of the estate of Ryan Hayes names Mount Carmel and Dr. William Husel, saying that Hayes died in early April 2017 after being administered lethal doses of fentanyl in combination with other drugs at Mount Carmel West hospital in Franklinton. The suit does not give Hayes’ age or hometown or indicate why he was receiving care at the hospital.

However, according to documents from government agencies, it is likely that Hayes is a patient who was taken to the hospital for cardiac arrest and later died within minutes of twice being administered a 1,000-microgram dose of the opioid fentanyl along with the opioid hydromorphone (Dilaudid) and the sedative midazolam (Versed).

The two administrations of the three-drug cocktail in April 2017 were spaced 19 minutes apart, the first given by one nurse and the second by another, according to State of Ohio Board of Nursing documents.

A recent Ohio Department of Health inspection report says a Mount Carmel policy updated after Husel’s December firing sets the usual adult dose of fentanyl at 25 to 100 micrograms. The report says 32 vials of fentanyl were accessed from an automatic drug-dispensing cabinet using four separate overrides to avoid warnings and pharmacy pre-approvals.

The nursing board documents suggest the patient would have been given 20 total vials of the drug.

Attorneys at the Columbus firm Schiff & Associates, who are handling the Hayes lawsuit, were unavailable late Tuesday.

Mount Carmel has said that Husel, 48, of Liberty Township near Dublin, ordered inappropriate painkiller doses for 35 critically ill patients, with the dosages high enough to be potentially fatal for 29 of them. Nursing board documents indicate that the dosing dates to at least 2014.

Husel’s medical license has been suspended, and he is under investigation by law enforcement. One of his lawyers has said he did not intend to kill anyone.