Tampa Nursing Home Abuse Case – Media Coverage

Nursing Home Chart: Sloppy or Deceptive?

Pasco Times
Date: June 1, 1997
By: William R. Levesque
New Port Richey


A woman sued a New Port Richey facility after part of her leg had to be amputated. A check of her medical chart yields an array of inconsistencies.

New Port Richey—Sue Timoney looked at Gertrude Reiher’s medical chart last July and decided to do something she knew put her nursing license at risk:

Nine months after Reiher had left Park Lake Village Care Center, Timoney made additions to her chart that indicated she had treated a skin ulcer on Reiher’s left foot.

Timoney, who works at the nursing home, made the additions after learning that Reiher had filed suit against Park Lake, alleging that improper care she received there led to the amputation of part of her left leg. The nurse maintains that Reiher’s foot was, in fact, treated.

“Isn’t it wrong to go back in and make an entry nine months after the fact?” an attorney asked her months later.

“Yes,” Timoney answered, “It is wrong.” “Why would you do something that was wrong?” “I don’t know.”

The lawsuit Reiher filed against Park Lake was settled two weeks ago for an undisclosed sum, leaving unanswered questions about the 75-year-old New Port Richey retiree’s stay at Park Lake in 1995 and actions taken after her suit was filed.


A central question:

Did Park Lake employees, as Reiher’s attorney charges, participate in a sloppy cover up to plug omissions in the chart of a women suing them? Or did nurses, acting without motive, do nothing more than fail to update a patient’s chart in an accurate and timely fashion?

“How can Timoney remember nine months after the fact what treatment she completed on Gertrude Reiher? Reiher’s Tampa attorney, Michael Trentalange, said in an interview before the settlement. “ We’re supposed to trust her?”

An attorney representing Park Lake said its employees would not comment about Reiher’s case.

In a one-paragraph statement, attorney C. Howard Hunter said, “ While Mr. And Mrs. Reiher have alleged otherwise, Park Lake Village has consistently contended that Mrs. Reiher’s care was appropriate and denied that its employees acted inappropriately in caring for her.”

Reiher’s medical chart provides an array of inconsistencies, most unrelated to Timoney Among them:

· Reiher’s chart shows that she received treatment at Park Lake on the 7a.m.-to-3 p.m. shift Aug. 1 through 3,1995, when in fact, she was not admitted to the home until the evening of Aug. 3.

· Records of the meals Reiher ate at park Lake document the percentage of food she consumed daily during June 1995, well before she was a resident.

· Reiher’s chart shows that she ate 100 percent of her breakfast and 90 percent of her lunch and dinner Sept. 12, 1995, the same day a nurse’s notes say Reiher refused to eat.

· A record shows Reiher’s blood-sugar level was tested Sept. 18, 1995, at 6 a.m., more than six hours after she was taken from Park Lake to a hospital.

· Timoney made notations indicating that she treated Reiher on two days that Park Lake’s work records show she didn’t even work. Timoney said the notations were a simple mistake.

If Timoney didn’t treat Reiher those two days, who did?

“Do you know if there was anybody that took care of wounds during the period of time that you were gone?” Trentalange asked Timoney during a March deposition.

Park Lake administrator Betty Breden first learned that Reiher had filed suit against the nursing home when she read an article about the lawsuit in the Times on July 2, 1996.

Accounts of what happened next vary greatly.

Timoney said at deposition that Breden, after learning of the lawsuit, simply asked her to review Reiher’s chart to refresh her recollection of the case.

“ I reviewed the chart and saw that there was things that I did not sign for, and I signed for then,” she said at deposition.

Timoney denied that anyone asked her to make additions to the chart.

A former Park Lake employee, however, contradicts her.

Joanne DeJohn, then Park Lake’s records custodian, said during a deposition that, after Reiher filed suit, she overheard Breden tell Timoney to fill gaps in the chart.

“Betty Breden…had told me that we were being sued, and she asked me to pull Mrs. Reiher’s chart,” Dejohn said in a Dec. 6, 1996, deposition. “ So I went and I pulled the chart.

“And she said that there was …something missing on the treatment sheet, and she wanted one of the nurses to fill in the treatment sheet,” DeJohn said.

She said the nurse who did so was Timoney.

State law says that anyone who “fraudulently alters, defaces or falsifies any medical or other nursing home record” has committed a misdemeanor.

Days later, Breden fired DeJohn because she said DeJohn failed to adequately maintain records at the facility.

Timoney, who did not return call for comment, said in a March deposition that she did not sign off on treatments if she did not actually complete them.

In January, however, Park Lake’s chief nurse reprimanded Timoney for signing a chart to indicate that she had changed the dressing on a patient’s foot when, in fact, she had not.

At deposition in March, Timoney said she could not remember specifics of the case, unrelated to Reiher’s, even days after the incident.

“And, in fact, 10 days after this treatment that you were reprimanded about, you were unable to recall specifics about the event, correct?" Trentalange asked her.

“Correct,” Timoney said.

“How is it that nine months after Gertrude Reiher’s discharge you were able to recall that treatment was done to her wound?”

“ I don’t know,” Timoney said.

“ I don’t know,” she answered.

“Did you give any kind of status report to anybody, bring them up to date on the condition of people’s wounds before you left?”

“No.”

“How do we know that everybody’s wounds at Park Lake Village weren’t simply being ignored during the period of time that you were gone?”

“I don’t know,” Timoney said.

“I wasn’t there.”

Reiher had entered Park Lake for rehabilitation therapy after a stroke and spent less than two months there.

A diabetic who also suffers from Alzheimer’s, Reiher today lives with her husband, Paul, in New Port Richey. She requires constant attention from her husband and a home health care worker.

“ When she lost her leg, it was devastating to her,” Paul Reiher, 69, said in an interview before the settlement. “She doesn’t place much value on life anymore. She hates being what she is.”