Lawsuit targets Hartford Hospital
Staff allegedly failed to notice woman’s heart rate before her death
An East Hartford woman died in a remote monitoring room at Hartford Hospital when her heart rate plummeted so that she had no pulse, according to a lawsuit filed on her behalf in Superior Court in Hartford.
Nancy Dibattista, 49, of East Windsor underwent surgery at the hospital on July 6, 2020, to have ribs repaired and to have hardware replaced, according to the suit, brought by her sister, Shelby Rousseau, as administrator of Dibattista’s estate, against Hartford Healthcare.
“She had a condition that caused her to suffer from rib fractures, and she went in to have a fracture repaired,” said Kathleen Nastri of Koskoff, Koskoff & Bieder. Dibattista had a minor son who needed special care, Nastri said.
After spending time in the post-anesthesia care unit, “where she was noted to be awake, alert, and oriented,” according to the complaint, Dibattista was taken to a room that has telemetry monitoring, so a nurse can monitor several patients remotely, Nastri said.
“Everyone on there is hooked up to machines,” she said. “That allows them to monitor her heart rate remotely. So you don’t have to be in the room. You can do it from a separate room where they can monitor a number of patients.”
Nastri said the monitors were on and “at one point, a nurse came into the room to check on her. … She made a noise, which the nurse took to be a response. It wasn’t a verbal response; it was just a noise. And the nurse left the room again.”
Nastri said the nurse “ignored all of the signs of a low heart rate called a bradycardia. And then she went into something called a junctional bradycardia, which is very dangerous.”
According to the lawsuit, “Despite a bradycardia and junctional bradycardia, which is a life-threatening heart rate/ rhythm, that lasted for approximately one hour, HHC personnel did nothing to intervene to treat or protect Nancy Dibattista.”
The suit continues, “The junctional bradycardia led to asystole, also known as ‘flat line.’”
The complaint claims that it took more than 10 minutes to resuscitate Dibattista. However, Nastri said, “She had suffered terrible brain damage and she was alive for about seven days before her family decided to terminate life support and they’ve donated her organs,” she said.
Dibattista was taken off life support July 15, 2020.
She said Dibattista’s being monitored on telemetry should have been reason enough to keep close watch on her.
“If you have a patient on telemetry it suggests that you have already determined that the patient needs some more careful monitoring than a patient who’s just on a regular floor,” Nastri said.
“And the telemetry was giving them the information they needed, but they ignored the information and allowed the patient to fall into essentially a fatal heart rhythm before she died,” she said.
Nastri said there are several factors that could have caused Dibattista’s heart rate to drop.
“They ignored the information and allowed the patient to fall into essentially a fatal heart rhythm before she died.” — Kathleen Nastri of Koskoff, Koskoff & Bieder
“She was on doses of narcotics postoperatively for pain control. She was probably having some issues or pain with breathing because of the nature of her surgery, which involved fractures to her ribcage,” Nastri said.
“She was lying flat on her back in a bed, which makes breathing or can make breathing more difficult. We’ll find out more as discovery progresses,” she said.
The lawsuit claims that Hartford Healthcare was negligent in monitoring Dibattista, in recognizing risk factors for her breathing issues and for failing to respond to abnormal vital signs and her bradycardia.
It also claims the health care system’s employees overmedicated Dibattista, failed to promptly resuscitate her and failed to have an alarm system to alert staff to “life-threatening vital signs.”
Dibattista’s estate also claims Hartford Healthcare was reckless and “utterly failed to monitor a patient whom they knew to be at risk for respiratory depression,” ignored life-threatening vital signs, warnings that Dibattista was in danger, ignored her junctional bradycardia and hired inexperienced and incompetent staff.
A spokeswoman for Hartford Healthcare said she could not comment on pending litigation.