Mother asks $31 million after babies switched
Any risk manager could have seen it coming, and now it’s here. The Virginia hospital that mixed up the identities of two babies and sent them home with the wrong mothers recently now is being sued by one of the mothers for $31 million. (See Healthcare Risk Management, January 1999, pp. 14-15.)
This is only the latest chapter in the hospital’s woes concerning this mix-up. In April, the hospital settled with one of the children for $2 million, a settlement that the girl’s biological mother, Paula Johnson, fought to prevent. The parents who took the girl home from the hospital died in a car accident, but the girl’s guardians sued the hospital on her behalf. The biological mother received nothing of that settlement and failed in preventing it. In May, she filed suit against the University of Virginia Medical Center in Stafford County Circuit Court in Roanoke, accusing physicians, nurses, and administrators of negligence and fraud.
She claims that the mix-up caused her mental pain and anguish, and she also is suing for loss of companionship with her biological child. Johnson has raised Callie Conley since bringing her home from the hospital in 1995, and Johnson’s own biological child was raised by Conley’s biological parents. The mistake was not discovered until July 1998, after Conley’s biological parents were killed in an automobile accident.
The Charlottesville police department reported its conclusion recently that the mix-up happened when one or more of the babies’ wrist and ankle bands slipped off in the nursery, when the babies were together. There was no evidence of intentional switching, the police report. The hospital now uses newer, high-tech identity systems that are unlikely to fall off.
Though it has acknowledged the identity mix-up, the hospital declined to comment on the lawsuit.
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