Drug rehab facilities can fail patients on many fronts and allow a tragic death.

Staff members can fail to monitor patients in recovery, later finding them in bed, already at life-threatening risk. Treatment centers can also harm recovery efforts by releasing patients before they are strong enough to survive without care.

In California, facility owners and operators can be financially liable for allowing the death of a patient, even if the patient had already been discharged. The family left behind should receive full support with funeral costs, the loss of income the victim may have provided, and their emotional trauma.

Patients Left Unmonitored at Critical Times in Recovery

Families choose a drug treatment center based on the care that’s promised. Family members want to be able to trust that their loved one will have the best chance at recovery.

That usually means a staff that provides constant monitoring. It should also involve a staff that knows exactly what to do for patients who manage to overdose or who experience withdrawal symptoms.

Unfortunately, these basic promises of care can go unfulfilled, leaving patients at risk.

Patients in bed lying awake or asleep can need extra attention, because it can be hard to tell how someone’s doing while they have their eyes closed or have their face concealed.

Staff members making important bed checks may not go far enough or fail to make the checks at all.

These are a few of the careless acts that can lead to a tragedy:

• Failure to catch the signs of an overdose
• Failure to catch respiratory problems for someone in withdrawal
• Failure to notice a patient experiencing seizures
• Failure to notice a patient is unconscious or in a coma
• Failure to monitor for dangerous vital signs
• Failure to use withdrawal scales (the CIWA scale with alcohol and benzodiazepine, the COWS scale with opioid recovery)
• Failure to escalate treatment to a hospital when required

These and other failures in care can leave facility corporate owners liable for the tragic loss of life. But support for family members isn’t guaranteed. Evidence will be needed to prove drug rehab negligence. A lawyer is often a necessary advantage to gain access to difficult evidence and documents, especially when facilities and their lawyers try to conceal certain details of what happened.

Risk to Patients Who Are Prematurely Discharged

The situation is even more hazardous when the patient experiences withdrawal symptoms or overdose side effects outside a treatment facility.

Patients still in recovery and detox are released too early for many reasons. One route known as “patient dumping” sees patients removed from rehab facilities when their insurance coverage runs out. Patients

It’s an unethical practice and also breaks California law and federal regulations.

Patient Dumping might be identified when patients still medically vulnerable are released to…

• …the street.
• …a homeless shelter.
• …a family that isn’t properly prepared to offer care.

The Code of Federal Regulations Title 42 § 483.15 Admission, transfer, and discharge rights. covers what rehab clinics can and can’t get away with. California’s Code of Regulations also details patients’ rights in discharge situations in Tit. 22, § 72527 – Patients’ Rights.

California’s Office of Administrative Hearings and Appeals (OAHA) offers hearings for victims and their families after a dispute over a discharge or readmission.

An experienced attorney can also help families hold facilities accountable to these laws and medical standards.

Support Available for Families Who Lose a Loved One to a Facility Overdose

An attorney works on behalf of all family members to file a wrongful death claim and, in some cases, a survival claim.

These claims would seek full support for these and other hardships the family faced presently and in the future:

• Support for a proper funeral service and burial costs.
• Financial support for the future when victims can’t count on the income a loved one used to provide.
• Support for the care and guidance that’s been lost.
• Support for the grief families must continue to cope with.
• Support for the loss of companionship parents will feel after losing a child due to negligence in an adolescent drug rehab center.
• Punitive damages

Punitive damages are penalties a court assesses on extremely negligent facilities. They are levied against a rehab facility that acts with such disregard for patients that it’s almost an intentional level of negligence and malice. Punitive damages are not possible in all cases.

The penalties aren’t assigned for the benefit of family members. However, families do receive the additional money paid through fines.

The fines are meant to punish businesses for their carelessness, including the premature discharge of patients, and encourage them and other clinics not to allow such an abandonment of duties toward patients.

Contact us if a rehab facility caused the death of a loved one.

Attorney Martin Gasparian offers a free, confidential consultation to all family members who have lost a loved one at a California rehab facility.

This meeting comes with no obligation. It’s a no-risk opportunity to find out if treatment centers can be held responsible for a tragic death and what they should be offering those left behind.

Call us today or fill out a free case review form.