Rehab patients who overdose on Fentanyl can experience respiratory issues and even stop breathing.
Facilities can have staff members without proper CPR training or who fall behind on certification, which can reduce the chances a patient can be revived.
Families can hold drug rehab facilities with negligent staff financially responsible for tragic deaths.
To find out how your family can hold a rehab clinic accountable, take advantage of a free case consultation. Call us today or fill out a free case review form.
Overdose Breathing Dangers
Staff members who are trained to monitor for breathing issues and deliver life-saving rescue breathing are critical in drug rehab centers.
Patients who are suffering through withdrawal or under the effects of a drug overdose can also suddenly experience breathing issues.
The effects of a drug like an opioid (Fentanyl), a Benzodiazepine (benzo), or even alcohol can slow the body’s automatic functions such as breathing. The CDC reports that patients may show signs of choking or make a gurgling noise when they are experiencing a lack of air.
It’s a dangerous state because patients can go without oxygen reaching their brains. If they survive, they can still suffer anoxic brain damage. This is damage caused when all oxygen to the brain is stopped and can happen in just a few minutes after an overdose.
When Staff Members Fail to Deliver Life-Saving CPR
Drug rehab facilities promise vigilant care of patients and immediate care if they suffer medical emergencies. Unfortunately, negligent facilities can fail to deliver basic care like monitoring of vital signs and providing NARCAN and CPR in certain situations.
The use of rescue breathing quickly and correctly depends on many factors.
Drug rehab owners can be liable when a patient is allowed to come to harm when their employees fail in these safety steps and others:
- An overdosing patient isn’t found soon enough to allow CPR to revive them
- A patient in withdrawal isn’t monitored closely enough to detect breathing issues
- Negligent training when patients don’t know how to administer CPR correctly or don’t receive regular training
- When staff members don’t administer NARCAN correctly to stop an overdose and allow for normal breathing
- Negligent supervision when patients lie there in cardiac arrest without being discovered soon enough
CPR Certification Gaps
Clinical workers are generally required to have CPR certification in California. This requirement would need to be renewed every two years.
That certification would often be obtained through the Red Cross or the American Heart Association. In some cases, facility owners will send staff to groups that put on seminars.
In California, employers should not be allowing employees to get their certification through online providers.
Another problem that puts patients at risk is “certification gaps.” This is when staff members are late to renew their certification within the two-year period. Over those two years, they can forget how to properly perform CPR. They can also fall behind on the latest, safest methods of administering rescue breathing.
These problems are allowed by the facility owners and operators, and those employers should be held accountable if it ends up causing harm to a patient.
Support Available to Families After a Fatal Accident in a Rehab
These failures can be shown in staff monitoring logs, internal investigation results, and even surveillance video. This evidence can be locked behind a rehab center’s walls, but a California rehab facility wrongful death lawyer could collect the proof needed and make legal requests to preserve all evidence.
At the same time, a skilled attorney would craft a full list of the hardships families faced after the preventable death of a loved one.
An experienced attorney should demand these wrongful death benefits and more:
Wrongful Death Support
- Funeral and burial costs
- Money to replace the income a victim has provided through employment to support the family
- Support for a loss of love and guidance
- Support for lost special life moments, such as holiday gatherings, weddings, and the birth of children and grandchildren
- Support for a loss of companionship for parents who lose a teenager at a juvenile drug rehab home
Survival Action Support (This is support for the victim’s hardships endured before they passed on)
- The patient’s ambulance fees and hospital bills left behind
- Reimbursement for any property damage the patient suffered
- Replacement of the income a patient lost while forced to miss even more time at work
Why an Overdosing Patient Isn’t At Fault
When CPR isn’t administered correctly, facilities should be held accountable.
Lawyers for a health care network may tell you the patient was at fault. However, that’s not true.
When facilities agree to admit a patient, they legally take responsibility for a vulnerable person and must do everything possible to keep them safe and fully monitor their recovery.
When they fail in their duties, don’t provide proper medical care, fail to prevent drug exposure, and fail to deliver CPR, they can be held liable. Families should be supported.
Contact Us if a California Rehab Facility Caused Your Loved One Harm.
Attorney Martin Gasparian offers a free, confidential consultation to families who lost a loved one at a California rehab facility.
Call us today or fill out a free case review form. If you need our help, we don’t charge your family anything upfront. We are only paid if we win the case for you. Then our fee comes out of the settlement check that a negligent facility must write for your family.