Two more ex-Beatrice patients die

LINCOLN — Five of the 47 medically fragile people ordered out of the Beatrice State Developmental Center by state officials have now died since their sudden move.

The latest occurred Sunday afternoon. Claudia Wright, 66, died at the West Point, Neb., hospital after a sudden illness.

Three days earlier, Sara Schnell, 65, died in the hospice unit of a Lincoln nursing home.

Family members of current and former center residents say the deaths confirm their apprehensions about moving people from the state institution.

“At some point people have to ask what’s going on here,” said Peg Huss of Omaha. “These are people who were cared for safely for years” at Beatrice.

But the chairman of a legislative committee overseeing the troubled institution said he can’t conclude whether the move was tied to the deaths.

“It would be difficult for anybody to speak about those deaths and the cause of those deaths and do anything more than speculate,” said State Sen. Steve Lathrop of Omaha. “It’s unfortunate BSDC deteriorated to the point they were removed.”

Kathie Osterman, a spokeswoman for the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services, said she couldn’t comment on specific deaths because of privacy laws. She noted, however, that all those who moved had a history of medical complications.

Nebraska’s chief medical officer ordered the transfer of center residents with serious health complications after four residents died in January. The deaths included three people who lived on the same floor and were considered medically fragile.

A state investigation into one death, that of 18-year-old Olivia Manes, concluded that staff had failed to provide her with appropriate emergency care.

Investigators had come to a similar conclusion about a death 10 months earlier. In that case, staff waited at least 10 minutes to start cardiopulmonary resuscitation on a man who had stopped breathing.

Schnell and Wright were among those moved from the facility last winter, often with only a few hours’ notice. Schnell went to a hospital and later to an apartment in the community. Wright went to a nursing home.

Schnell’s relatives said Tuesday that she never got over the shock of being yanked from her home of 53 years.

At Beatrice, she had been a happy-go-lucky person who loved polka music, trips to Husker football games and the Wilber Czech festival, said her stepbrother and guardian, Garry Wheeler of Lee’s Summit, Mo.

She used a wheelchair and was fed through a tube.

But when she realized she wasn’t going back to the Beatrice center, Wheeler said, Schnell stopped talking and began refusing her tube-feedings, medication and breathing treatments.

“She was just so down and depressed, she just gave up,” said Lavina Campbell of Beatrice, Schnell’s aunt. “She never understood why she couldn’t go back.”

On Saturday, Wright was taken from the nursing home in Scribner to the hospital. Wright’s guardian, her cousin, did not immediately return messages Tuesday.

She had been waiting to move into an Omaha group home that specializes in caring for developmentally disabled people with medical complications.

She liked to wear lots of jewelry and listen to music. She also enjoyed babies and stuffed animals, according to an obituary circulated to those who knew her.

The first deaths among the 47 transferred residents came a few weeks after the move. Mary Woodard and Patricia Kratky died in Lincoln hospitals on Feb. 16 and 21 respectively.

James Allen died last month after battling pneumonia for several weeks.

The Beatrice center serves people with mental retardation and other developmental disabilities. Most have additional physical problems or mental illnesses.

The center has lost its Medicaid certification because of continuing care problems. It is operating under a settlement agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice, which requires the state to correct conditions and practices that the department said violated residents’ constitutional and legal rights.

Contact the writer:

402-473-9583, martha.stoddard@owh.com