A grieving mother is seeking justice for her 4-year-old daughter who died after being rushed to Steward Healthcare Hospital, but justice is on hold as the company files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
Tabatha Toy’s heart is forever broken. She says she will never get over the death of her daughter, Tina, who died after being rushed to the emergency room at Good Samaritan Medical Center in Brockton in March 2016. Tina and her identical twin sister, Jasmine, were born with Down syndrome, but the girls were thriving.
Toy took Tina to the doctor because she was feeling unwell – she had had a seizure and needed help.
“They took my child away and I can’t get her back. This is with me for the rest of my life,” Toy said.
According to Tina’s medical records, she arrived at the Good Samaritan emergency room at 4:09 p.m. on March 25, 2016. She had a high fever, a rapid heart rate, a strep infection and seizures. Her oxygen levels were dropping and her brain was swelling.
Toy said hospital staff ignored her daughter’s breathing problems after she was initially examined and given medication. At times, her daughter’s chest would rise off the bed, setting off alarms on the monitor, but staff would simply turn off the alarms and leave.
“I feel like we were just pushed aside and forgotten. They didn’t have the time or they were too busy. I felt like they didn’t care about my daughter,” Toy said.
Hospital policy at the time was to promptly transfer any children under the age of 8 who required inpatient treatment to another hospital and to closely monitor the children while in the emergency room.
Tina’s family filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Good Samaritan in 2019, but the case has been delayed multiple times.
Good Samaritan is a Steward Healthcare facility. The NBC10 Boston Investigators have found that the case is one of hundreds of unresolved civil lawsuits filed against Steward and its affiliates over the past decade. Those lawsuits include 12 wrongful death lawsuits, medical malpractice lawsuits, fraud and business-related lawsuits for unpaid services, goods and rent. All of those lawsuits are pending in Steward’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
Katherine Wickenheiser, an attorney representing the Toy family, said she was frustrated.
“This case deserves to be solved and this family deserves answers and closure, but I don’t know if that’s possible for them now.”
Wickenheiser said that day in 2016, the emergency room at Good Samaritan Hospital was stretched thin and there was little they could do to help.
“These communities depend on Steward Medical Group and the disservice and the actions they’ve taken against this community is heartbreaking and it’s been building up and they’ve known about it for a long time and allowed it to happen,” she said.
According to the lawsuit, at Good Samaritan Hospital, 4-year-old Tina stopped breathing multiple times. Doctors said Tina’s tongue was larger than normal due to Down Syndrome, which may have caused it to collapse into her airway. The same doctor wrote that Tina’s condition was stable and eventually ordered her transferred, but it was too late. Three hours after being admitted to Good Samaritan Hospital, Tina was rushed to a hospital in Boston. Tina suffered severe brain damage and was taken off life support the next day. The official cause of death was a viral upper respiratory tract infection complicated by MRSA pneumonia.
Toy is left with a hole in his heart. Tina’s twin daughter, Jasmine, is also heartbroken at the loss of her playmate and best friend. Tabatha says Tina has assured Jasmine that she loves her and is always watching over her.
“I want closure, I want them to be held accountable for what they did and I want no one to be hurt again,” she told NBC10 Boston.
Tina’s case was set to go into mediation in September. Her lawyers fear her family will never get justice. Steward denies the allegations in Tina’s case. A spokesman would not comment on civil cases affected by the bankruptcy.
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