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as a staff member at Hedrick Medical Center in Chillicothe, Missouri, trying to kill sick people? That’s the question that former Hedrick emergency-room physician Cal Greenlaw faced the evening of February 18, 2002, as he attempted to save the life of a patient. Greenlaw could find no good explanation for the cardiovascular collapse and bizarre blood-sugar levels that he was trying to treat. Then a nurse in the hospital’s intensive-care unit told him that two other patients prior to that night had displayed similar puzzling symptoms. Greenlaw concluded that someone working at the hospital had given fatal drug doses to patients, and he shared his concern at a March 12, 2002, meeting with administrators. Minutes from that meeting indicate that the doctor told his bosses that someone on staff was “attempting to kill and sometimes succeeding in killing patients.” Greenlaw would later say in an affidavit that, after the meeting wrapped up, he heard the hospital’s nursing director, Julie Jones, say, “We don’t have a problem here, and if anyone breathes a word of this, you’ll be fired.” Unsatisfied with the hospital’s response, Greenlaw went to the Livingston County Sheriff’s Office. Authorities there suggested that the hospital install video-surveillance equipment in the respiratory therapists’ locker area — a seemingly simple task, given that the hospital was undergoing renovations at the time. Later that March, Greenlaw met with Jim Johnson, Hedrick Medical Center’s CEO, and said he suspected a specific nurse of killing patients at the hospital. “No, we don’t have a problem,” Johnson said, according to Greenlaw’s account of the conversation. “We can’t let this get out, or it will affect our admissions.” Greenlaw recommended that the hospital form a committee to review the deaths, and he
A lawsuit charging that a therapist killed
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patients in a Chillicothe hospital can go forward.
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passed along the sheriff’s suggestion about the surveillance equipment. Johnson blew off both recommendations, according to Greenlaw. The doctor’s account is contained in a November 26 Missouri Court of Appeals decision regarding five wrongful-death lawsuits against Hedrick Medical Center and its owner, St. Luke’s Health System in Kansas City. The lawsuit contends that nine people died under suspicious circumstances at Hedrick Medical Center between February 3 and May 18, 2002. Each of the nine died while a respiratory therapist named Jennifer Hall was working, according to the lawsuit. The lawsuits claimed that Hall systematically killed patients at the hospital by administering fatal doses of insulin and a drug called succinylcholine, a muscle relaxant normally used to calm respiratory muscles to ease the insertion of a breathing tube down a patient’s throat. An overdose of that drug paralyzes a patient’s breathing muscles, leading to slow suffocation and death. Hall, who lives in the Kansas City area, has never been charged with a crime and is not named as a defendant in any of the civil lawsuits. J. Kent Emison, a Lexington, Missouri, lawyer who represents the family of one of the victims, declined to discuss why he didn’t name Hall as a defendant. Hall’s attorney, Matt O’Connor, says his client had no involvement in any of the mysterious deaths at Hedrick Medical Center. “Clearly, there is no proof that Ms. Hall was involved,” O’Connor tells The Pitch. O’Connor adds that he is not aware of any criminal investigation that targets his client, and says she has never been deposed in civil proceedings. “It’s really concerning,” O’Connor says. “Can you imagine? You’re a person who has done nothing wrong, who has not been named
in the lawsuit, to have your name bandied about in such a horrific way?” Hall was suspended and then fired from Hedrick Medical Center in May 2002, two days after the last of the nine deaths mentioned in the lawsuit occurred there. No other suspicious deaths were reported at the hospital following her departure, according to the appeals court decision. The lawsuit on behalf of the deceased patients takes aim at the hospital and its owner for, it contends, trying to cover up the possibility that one of its staffers had deliberately killed them. Specifically, the lawsuit contends that the hospital executives told employees to bury information regarding Hall, avoided autopsies on the victims, told employees to tell victims’ families that the causes of death were natural, shut down the hospital’s peer-review committee, and failed to investigate Hall when local law enforcement requested it. Through a lawyer, Hedrick Medical Center and St. Luke’s Health System denied the lawsuit’s claims. The appeals court overturned a Livingston County court’s ruling that the statute of limitations for the plaintiffs to file a lawsuit had expired. “I can tell you my client definitely disputes
all the allegations in this pleading,” says Chris Schnieders, an associate with Kansas City law firm Wagstaff & Cartmell, who represents the hospital along with firm co-founder Tom Wagstaff. Schnieders has declined to discuss the specifics of the case but says his client plans to appeal the November ruling to the Missouri Supreme Court. St. Luke’s Health System, which bought Hedrick Medical Center in 2003, believes that the Missouri Supreme Court will reverse the appellate court decision. “More importantly, we passionately defend the actions of the hospital and the forthright manner in which this case has been handled,” St. Luke’s spokeswoman Rebecca Sesler writes in an e-mail statement to The Pitch. “We care deeply for the communities and patients we serve and consider it a privilege to partner with them in their care.” More than 11 years after the deaths, authorities in Chillicothe and Livingston County are still investigating. “There’s stuff going on with that,” says Livingston County Sheriff Steve Cox. “I really can’t comment on it.” Adam Warren, the Livingston County prosecutor, told the St. Joseph News-Press in 2012 that he had asked the Chillicothe Police Department to take another look at the case, based on information he had received from the civil cases and Livingston County’s coroner, Scott Lindley. That same article describes the difficulty of proving intentional succinylcholine poisoning, in part because the body metabolizes the drug so quickly that little trace remains. Lindley confirms that an investigation is ongoing but won’t discuss the case in detail. “There are other offices that are involved in it, obviously,” Lindley tells The Pitch.
E-mail steve.vockrodt@pitch.com
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