Published: May 15, 2008 07:58 am      

Local hospitals and nursing home named in patient lawsuits

Both Madison County hospitals and a Berea nursing home are subjects of recent malpractice lawsuits.

A Richmond couple sued Pattie A. Clay Regional Medical Center and Dr. Granam Thambipillai on April 24 alleging that Terry Reeves suffered debilitating strokes because Thambipillai, a hospital doctor, refused to run tests ordered by the patient’s physician.

Terry and Carol Reeves filed without the aid of legal counsel.

The suit claims Terry Reeves went to his personal physician, Dr. Anil Harrison, complaining of numbness in his lower right leg/foot and lower right arm/hand.

Harrison immediately sent Reeves to Pattie A. Clay and ordered CT and MRI diagnostic tests.

According to the suit, Dr. Granam Thambipillai interviewed Reeves at the hospital and learned he chewed tobacco and drank beer in the evenings.

Thambipillai then allegedly said, “You’re an alcoholic with a tobacco problem,” refused to have the tests conducted and told Reeves he would be dismissed.

The next morning, after a nurse asked a neurologist named Dr. Picon to examine Reeves, she informed the patient he had suffered a stroke.

“This could have been prevented if I had been called when you first came to the hospital,” Picon allegedly told Reeves.

(The suit does not list’s Picon’s first name, but an online directory lists a Dr. Dora Picon as a Pattie A. Clay neurologist.)

Picon allegedly confronted Thambipillai the next day and said, as a general practitioner, he should have consulted her.

The suit claims that five days later, as Reeves was being discharged, Thambipillai apologized.

Thambipillai’s actions as the hospital’s agent caused Reeves to become permanently disabled and he was forced to give up his job as an inventory control manager at Toyota South in Richmond.

The suit seeks unspecified damages for Reeves and his wife for medical expenses, lost wages, pain and mental anguish.

In their responses, attorneys for Thambipillai and the medical center asked for the suit’s dismissal because the Reeveses allegedly lack sufficient information to form a belief about the truth of their claims.

On April 22, an attorney for Zola M. Kindred of Berea filed suit claiming that she received treatment from the St. Joseph Hospital-Berea emergency room that deviated from accepted standards and injured her.

The nature of care and alleged injury are unnamed.

Kindred seeks unspecified damages for physical and mental suffering and to cover medical expenses.

On May 8, Jerry Stamper, administrator of the late Joseph Stamper’s estate, sued The Terrace Nursing and Rehabilitation Facility in Berea, claiming that inadequate staffing and care which failed to meet standards set by the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services caused him to suffer pain, loss of personal dignity and an untimely death.

The suit seeks unspecified damages.

Bill Robinson can be reached at brobinson@richmondregister.com or at 623-1669, Ext. 267.