Heart Attack Blamed for Edgemoor Death : Fall Did Not Kill Patient, County Says

An 83-year-old legless man’s death after a fall at the county’s Edgemoor Geriatric Hospital in Santee resulted from a heart attack unrelated to the accident, the director of the San Diego County Department of Health Services told the Board of Supervisors Wednesday.

However, disciplinary action might be taken against an Edgemoor employee who failed to raise the guard rail on Frank Richardson’s bed, thereby indirectly causing the elderly patient to fall, Health Services Director James A. Forde said.

“The guard rail on his bed was down. It should have been up,” Forde said Wednesday. “We are looking into appropriate administrative action” against the employee, about whom Forde was unable to give details.

Richardson was found conscious on the floor by his bed in the early morning hours of Jan. 10, Forde said. As a precaution, he was taken to El Cajon Valley Hospital, where he was awake when admitted.

After examining Richardson, doctors decided he was all right and were planning to return him to Edgemoor. But the elderly man then suffered a heart attack. “There apparently was no concern about the fall,” Forde said of the hospital staff’s report.

Richardson was resuscitated but six hours later he suffered a second heart attack that killed him, Forde said.

“There is no reason to believe the patient’s death is related to his fall” considering that he was awake when admitted to the hospital, Forde said. Richardson had a history of cardiovascular ailments, Forde said.

Edgemoor assistant administrator Bob Parsons declined to comment, stating that “everything is being referred to Mr. Forde.”

The state Department of Health Services is also looking into the incident. An investigation is “in the preliminary stages,” said Ernie Trujillo, director of the San Diego office of the state Health Facilities Licensing Division.

Earlier this month, the state levied a $5,000 fine against Edgemoor because of a Dec. 10 incident in which a nursing assistant left a paraplegic patient unattended in a bathtub. The patient slipped into the tub and drowned, the county coroner’s office concluded.

The coroner’s office is not involved in the investigation of the Richardson death.