An unconscious man who was admitted to a hospital in Washington state in 2021 was taken off life support inadvertently when he was mistaken for someone else, according to two lawsuits.
David Wells, 69, fell unconscious after choking on a steak dinner and was admitted to PeaceHealth Southwest Medical Center in Vancouver on Aug. 8, 2021, according to a complaint obtained by HuffPost. At some point during Wells’ transport to the hospital, he was misidentified as the person who’d called 911, his roommate, Michael Beehler. When hospital staff asked if they should pull Wells’ life support, it was Beehler’s family, not Wells’, that made the call.
Wells’ family was not informed of the mix-up until a story by local news station KGW two years later, the outlet reported. Wells’ and Beehler’s families are now suing the hospital, as well as an ambulance service and funeral home.
According to one of the complaints, PeaceHealth staff contacted Beehler’s sister, Debbie Danielson, and told her she needed to decide whether to pull life support from her brother.
When Danielson agreed to end life support, Wells — not Beehler — was allowed to die, the complaint said.
A death notice for Beehler was published in a local newspaper and in the following days, Danielson made funeral arrangements and informed her family members that her brother had died, according to the complaint.
However, on Aug. 14, 2021, Beehler called Danielson.
“I said, ‘You can’t be alive. You’re dead!’” Danielson told KGW last year.
Danielson and Beehler notified local police that he was still alive, and an examination of “Beehler’s” body by the medical examiner’s office was able to confirm his identity as Wells, according to the complaint.
Wells’ son, Shawn Wells, was then informed about his father’s death, according to the complaint.
“They basically told me there was a medical emergency regarding my father. He had been pronounced dead,” Shawn Wells told KGW, calling the case “disturbing.”
The families are now suing PeaceHealth for negligence and emotional distress, as well as the ambulance company, American Medical Response, for misidentifying Wells, and All County Cremation and Burial Services, for allegedly failing to inform Shawn Wells about the mistake with his father.
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PeaceHealth and All County, did not immediately respond to HuffPost’s request for comment on the allegations. American Medical Response declined to provide a statement.
Complaints around Wells’ death also prompted a state investigation. According to a report released last year, when Wells collapsed, Beehler gave the responding paramedics his own identification, so paramedics listed Beehler’s name as a possible alias for the patient. The state found the hospital had failed to develop a process to ensure staff were properly trained to verify a patient’s identity, and that a registrar entered Beehler’s ID into the hospital’s system without following its policy.
“PeaceHealth has worked diligently to strengthen our patient identification processes, along with our continued collaboration with multiple community agencies involved in healthcare, including EMS,” a spokesperson for PeaceHealth told KGW.
