GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) -- A Grand Rapids hospital that disconnected a patient's heart monitor before he flatlined alone in his room will pay the man's family $750,000.
"It wasn't supposed to be this way," the man's wife said of his death. "If people would have done their jobs that night, (he would be alive). It wasn't difficult. They just needed to pay attention."
The patient, a 72-year-old Kent County man with a history of heart trouble, stopped in at Mercy Health Saint Mary's Byron Center campus because he felt like he was developing a bladder infection.
A nurse at the southwest campus checked his vitals and found a fast heart rate, rapid breathing rate and elevated blood pressure. After additional testing, a doctor diagnosed sepsis, a potentially dangerous condition that can develop when the body is fighting infection.
The emergency doctor at the southwest clinic ordered the man transported via ambulance -- with continuous heart monitoring -- to the hospital's downtown campus.
That's where things went terribly wrong, according to the attorney who represented the man's estate.