Families sue Vancouver hospital after wrong patient was taken off life support

KGW first reported on the medical mix-up last year, prompting a state investigation by the Washington Department of Health.
PORTLAND, Ore. — PeaceHealth Southwest Medical Center is facing a civil lawsuit after allowing a Vancouver family to pull the plug on the wrong man in a terrible case of mistaken identity.
In a lawsuit filed on Dec. 3, the man mistakenly believed to be dead, along with his family, claimed they suffered mental and emotional pain. The son of the man who died is also a plaintiff in the Clark County Superior Court case.
KGW first reported on the medical mix-up last year, prompting a state investigation by the Washington Department of Health.
The confusion started with a 911 call on Aug. 8, 2021. Medics responded to an apartment in Vancouver, where David Wells was unconscious and not breathing after choking while eating dinner. An ambulance transported him to PeaceHealth Southwest Medical Center in Vancouver.
Somewhere along the line, Wells was misidentified as his roommate, Michael Beehler. As a result, the hospital incorrectly treated Wells as Beehler.
PeaceHealth called Beehler’s family to make end-of-life decisions.
“They said he’s basically brain dead,” explained Debbie Danielson of Vancouver. “Do you want us to keep him on life support, or do you want to pull the plug?”
Danielson made the difficult decision to take the man off life support, believing the patient was her brother. In the following days, she made funeral arrangements and let family members know about the death, and a death notice was posted in the newspaper.
Then, the unexpected happened: Michael Beehler called his grieving sister. He was alive.
“I said, ‘You can’t be alive. You’re dead!” recalled Danielson.
The Clark County Medical Examiner retrieved the body and used fingerprints to confirm the deceased man was Wells, not Beehler.
The medical examiner notified next-of-kin, Wells’ son in California.
“They basically told me there was a medical emergency regarding my father. He had been pronounced dead,” said Shawn Wells, explaining that nobody told him about the mix-up — not the medical examiner, not the hospital or the funeral home.
It wasn’t until KGW contacted Shawn Wells, more than two years after his father’s death, that he learned about the medical mix-up.
“I’m at a loss for words how badly they handled this,” said Shawn Wells. “I’ll never be able to get that decision back.”
Wells, Beehler and Beehler’s sister have also filed a separate lawsuit against the ambulance company, the funeral home and medical examiner’s office.
American Medical Response (AMR) and Clark County declined to comment due to pending litigation. All County Cremation and Burial did not respond to a request for comment.
Following KGW’s reporting on the mix-up, the Washington Department of Health launched an on-site state investigation into the hospital. The investigation found two violations, according to state records. PeaceHealth didn’t have a good system to make sure staff were trained in verifying patient identification and the hospital failed to have a reliable method to identify each patient coming in for care.
Neither violation resulted in a citation because the hospital had made necessary improvements since the mix-up, investigators said.
There were no further misidentifications since the changes were made, according to the state report.
“PeaceHealth has worked diligently to strengthen our patient identification processes, along with our continued collaboration with multiple community agencies involved in healthcare, including EMS,” wrote PeaceHealth spokesperson Debra Carnes in an email to KGW. “Given that PeaceHealth is involved in litigation, it is unfortunate we are unable to share more facts about this situation.”
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