The Superior Court of Justice (TSJ) of Castilla y León, in a pioneering ruling in Spain, has condemned Sacyl, the regional health body, to compensate the relatives of a patient, MPG, who died after contracting Covid-19 at the Río Carrión Hospital (Palencia).
The deceased was admitted to said centre for a pathology unrelated to Covid-19 and was infected in the health centre itself when she was admitted with a Covid patient, as stated in the ruling of the Administrative Litigation Chamber of the Superior Court of Justice of Castilla y León in a ruling that thus upholds the lawsuit filed by the victim’s family in a process in which they have been represented by the lawyer Santiago Díez, from the ‘El Defensor del Paciente’ association.
The family does not want the amount to be published because they consider that the important thing is that no one experiences what their mother suffered again and that events like this do not occur again.
Therefore, the TSJ of Castilla y León condemns the SACYL to pay compensation to her children for her death, estimating that there was a violation of the lex artis by admitting the patient, suspected of COVID, with a confirmed patient, according to the information from ‘The Patient Advocate’.
The victim was admitted to the Río Carrión Hospital Emergency Room on September 6, 2020, with feverish syndrome due to cellulitis with bacteraemia. Among the tests requested, a blood sample was taken for blood culture and another nasopharyngeal exudate sample was taken for an Antigen test for SARS-COV-2.
The antigen test was positive, although with the warning from the hospital’s own laboratory that any positive in that initial test had to be confirmed by performing another more specific test, COVID-TMA, with a new sample. Even so, without confirming the suspicion, with the diagnosis of febrile syndrome, she was admitted to the COVID ward in a room where a patient with Covid was already located.
At 12:00 p.m. on September 7, the doctor in charge of the patient informed her children that the patient had tested negative in the TMA test for COVID and that her mother was going to remain in isolation.
Later that same day, MPG’s roommate called her children to ask them to send a series of belongings to her mother, including a mobile phone, informing them that her mother was admitted to her room. and that she was COVID positive.
The children contacted the Palencia University Care Complex when they were unaware of the news and until 8:00 p.m. they did not move her to an isolated room.
The patient was treated for the underlying disease, but presented a positive PCR result seven days after admission and hospital contact, she developed Covid symptoms fourteen days after admission, dying as a result of Covid infection due to complications of that disease 19 days after the clinical symptoms manifested.
Despite the defence of Sacyl and its insurance company insisting that “the protocols were followed,” the ruling points out that “no protocol is necessary to justify it, just common sense, that a presumed infectious person until it is confirmed is not able to be admitted to a room shared with another who is already diagnosed as such; the fact that this was the case before September 17, 2020 makes it evident that on September 7, 2020, the patient was already moved to a room isolated on the same floor due to having been in close contact with a positive patient.”
That is, “in the hospital there were enough rooms to admit the patient in a non-shared room, which would have avoided the hospital contagion that occurred when she was admitted to a room with a patient already confirmed with COvid-19.”
In this regard, Carmen Flores, president of the ‘El Defensor del Paciente’ association, indicates that the ruling is very important because it is pioneering in recognising that there was a violation of the lex artis by infecting a Covid patient in the hospital itself through carelessness.
“It was a serious responsibility not to isolate her until the contagion was confirmed. Covid cannot serve as an excuse to justify medical negligence. I regret all the other cases of people who suffered something similar, but who, by not seeking responsibility, have been left behind the path. In this specific case, the patient’s children did not have it easy, but they did not give up,” the statement concluded.
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