Sewickley Township woman sues AHN over methadone ‘poisoning’ error

When the surgeon arrived in the waiting room at Forbes Hospital in Monroeville on Jan. 13, Audrey Lindsey’s family immediately felt relief.

The doctor explained that her routine back surgery had gone great. He sent Lindsey’s long-time partner and daughter upstairs to wait for her to come out from anesthesia.

Their relief would be short-lived.

When Dr. Mazin Albert, Lindsey’s anesthesiologist, found Sam Hoover and Chrissy Lindsey, he told the family there had been a mistake.

The medical staff meant to give Lindsey methocarbamol, a muscle relaxant.

Instead, they gave her methadone, a powerful narcotic.

That grave medication error — admitted by the hospital, according to the lawsuit — has upended the Sewickley Township woman’s life.

The staff administered Narcan, the opioid reversal drug, but it wasn’t enough.

Lindsey was left unable to breathe on her own.

For more than a week, she remained on a ventilator and in restraints to stop her from thrashing and dislodging the breathing tube. Lindsey, 69, drifted in and out of consciousness, endured vivid hallucinations and had no idea what was happening.

When she could finally breathe by herself, her vocal cords were damaged, her breathing was impaired and she suffered memory loss, headaches and brain damage.

Now, more than eight months later, Lindsey continues to struggle with even the most mundane of tasks.

On Monday, she sued Allegheny Health Network, Forbes Hospital, Albert and Ellen Murray, the nurse anesthetist.

Her claims in Allegheny County Common Pleas Court include malpractice and negligence. Lindsey is seeking a jury trial and damages.

“Ms. Lindsey deserves justice, and defendants must be held accountable for shattering this innocent woman’s life,” said her attorney, Jordan Strokovsky, of Philadelphia.

Albert, Murray and an Allegheny Hospital Network representative could not immediately be reached for comment.

‘Literally poisoned’

Lindsey needed the back operation because she fell down 13 steps in her home. The pain was excruciating. She went to Forbes Hospital, where doctors determined that she needed a spinal fusion and laminectomy. She was scheduled for surgery two days later.

According to Lindsey’s medical records, the procedure, which started at 7:30 a.m. was successful. Just over two hours into the surgery, she was supposed to receive methocarbamol. Instead she got 200 mg of methadone.

The hospital listed “poisoning by methadone, accidental (unintentional), initial encounter,” according to what her lawyer described as a screenshot of part of her chart pasted into the lawsuit.

“Tragically, in this case, and in the hospital’s own words, Audrey Lindsey was literally poisoned by the medical professionals trusted to care for her,” the lawsuit said.

By 10:20 a.m., the lawsuit said, Lindsey was making no attempt to breathe on her own.

Lindsey was transferred to intensive care.

“They told me it was a slow-acting drug, so they had no idea how long it would be in her system,” Hoover said of the methadone.

Not only was Lindsey given the wrong drug, she also was given an excessive amount of methadone for a person of her weight, according to the lawsuit.

“Given its long half life and dose, it is recommended to remain intubated with controlled ventilation for the time being,” according to a note that Albert, the doctor, wrote in her chart.

Medical staff attempted to take Lindsey off the ventilator on Jan. 15, two days after surgery, but she developed increased respiratory distress and needed to be placed back on the breathing machine, the lawsuit said.

They tried again on Jan. 18, but it still didn’t work.

She was taken off the ventilator on Jan. 22, finally able to breathe on her own. But the trauma from having the breathing tube passed in and out of her trachea, the lawsuit said, caused permanent damage.

Lindsey was unable to eat or drink for 30 days and required a feeding tube, developed a C. diff infection, hallucinations, high blood pressure, pneumonia, trouble breathing, memory loss, voice change, sleep apnea and trauma to her laryngeal.

She remained hospitalized for nearly 45 days.

Three days after the medication error, Forbes Hospital’s manager of patient safety, Colleen Scarantine, sent Lindsey a letter, confirming the conversation medical staff had with her family.

“As was discussed with them, you received an incorrect medication that required additional healthcare services,” according to the letter obtained by TribLive. “We sincerely apologize for this event.”

Scarantine could not immediately be reached for comment.

‘A never event’

According to the lawsuit, what happened to Lindsey is characterized in the medical community as a “never event.”

“According to the National Quality Forum, ‘never events’ are errors in medical care that are clearly identifiable, preventable, and serious in their consequences for patients, and that indicate a real problem in the safety and credibility of a health care facility.”

“Never events,” according to the forum, a non-profit organization that seeks to improve healthcare outcomes, include surgery on the wrong body part, leaving a foreign body in a patient after surgery, mismatched blood transfusion, major medication error, severe pressure ulcers acquired in the hospital and preventable post-operative deaths.

In 2002, Pennsylvania’s legislature passed the Medical Care Availability and Reduction of Error Act, designed to reform medical liability

Among its stated purposes was to “reduce and eliminate medical errors by identifying problems and implementing solutions that promote patient safety.”

It created the Patient Safety Authority, which has become one of the largest patient safety databases in the world — listing more than 4 million event reports.

Pennsylvania is the only state that requires health care facilities to report all events that cause harm or have the potential to cause harm to a patient, according to the independent state agency.

Last year, the authority, which aggregates its data, received 287,997 reports. Just over 4% — or 11,750 — were classified as serious events.

Of those, 620 were classified as high harm, which are errors resulting in permanent harm or death. That was up 25% over the previous year, according to the Patient Safety Authority journal.

Medication errors, according to the journal, increased the most of any category, making up 14.1% of reports last year.

There were 40,680 medication errors in 2023. Of those, 294 were categorized as “serious events.”

Of those, 18 medication errors resulted in “high harm.”

Strokovsky, Lindsey’s lawyer, said he does not know if Forbes reported the medication error to the state, but they should have.

“There’s good reason this type of medication error is called a ‘never event,’ because it should never happen,” he said.

“I want my baby back”

Lindsey and Hoover, who live in what used to be a funeral home that backs up to the Youghiogheny River, have been together for seven years.

In 2015, Lindsey retired after 20 years working as an operator for Verizon. Her Verizon work came after years of helping to raise foster children.

Before the medication error, the couple said, they enjoyed gardening, going out to dinner, cooking and playing with their late cocker spaniel, Buddy. Lindsey canoed and traveled to California to visit her son, Bobby, and her grandchildren.

But since she returned from the hospital, Audrey can no longer do those things.

She needs help bathing, going to the bathroom and getting into Hoover’s truck. She tried to wash the windows recently and had to stop because the exertion was too much.

“I just can’t do things on my own,” she said.

Hoover, 65, who worked as a contractor, said he quit his job to become Lindsey’s full-time caregiver when she got out of the hospital.

As Lindsey described to a reporter what happened to her — she has memory loss and is missing large gaps of time — the wheezing caused by the damage from the repeated intubations, was audible.

She can’t speak loudly, and her voice becomes strained when speaking in long sentences.

Lindsey said that her doctor showed her a picture of her trachea, and it has a very small hole through which the air passes.

She fears that an upper respiratory infection could cause so much inflammation it might block the opening in her trachea.

“If that closes, I’m going to die because I can’t breathe,” Lindsey said.

Lindsey fears she may need a tracheostomy — a procedure to cut a hole through her neck and into her trachea to place a tube to be able to breathe adequately.

“I have nightmares at night. I don’t want to stop breathing and them have to put a trach in me if I live.”

Lindsey’s daughter said her mom is her best friend.

Those days in the hospital, she said, were terrible. She and Hoover visited every day, hoping for good news.

“I would always talk to her and get advice, and she wasn’t able to talk back,” Chrissy Lindsey said. “You wait every day for some type of good news, but if there was news, it was bad news.”

Since her release from the hospital, Lindsey’s weeks are filled with medical appointments. She had to learn how to walk again, she has speech therapy. She must see a neurologist, psychiatrist and ear, nose and throat specialist.

Hoover keeps everything organized on a wall calendar.

“I have so many doctor appointments,” Lindsey said. “He never complains.”

On Friday, as they talked to a reporter, they took turns reassuring one another about the road ahead.

When Lindsey became upset about the circumstances, Hoover told her “You’re my girl, and I’m going to take care of you.”

“I know,” she responded.

“You’re alive,” Hoover said. “You can’t breathe good, and you can’t talk good. But I got you back.”

A few minutes later, as they looked at photos from before Lindsey was injured, Hoover’s eyes filled with tears. He said he shouldn’t have looked at them.

“I want my baby back,” he said.

Lindsey, trying to comfort him, responded, “I’ll get there, honey.”

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