A Pennsylvania hospital has been sued over the death of a six-year-old boy who was left under a heating blanket for 10 hours overnight.
The boy’s temperature spiked to 107 degrees the night of January 10 when he was left unsupervised at Penn State Hershey Medical Center.
There are no records that his vital signs were checked for a 10-hour period, according to the state’s department of health.
Lawyers also accuse the hospital of failing to report the event for 77 days – despite guidelines which say such incidents should be reported within 24 hours.
The boy’s temperature spiked to 107 degrees the night of January 10 when he was left unsupervised at Penn State Hershey Medical Center (pictured)
The hospital says the boy had ‘ongoing, complex and life-limiting health issues’ when he was brought to the hospital in January with a below-normal temperature.
He was put under a special blanket called a Bair Hugger that forces warm air onto patients to raise their temperature.
Penn State Medical Center’s policy says the temperatures of patients under that type of heating or cooling devices are supposed to be checked at least every two hours.
The boy’s temperature was checked and recorded at normal intervals until 12.14am on January 11, when it was at 98 degrees, the health department concluded.
But it wasn’t recorded again until around 10am that morning when he was showing no vital signs. Roughly 22 minutes later his temperature was recorded as 107.6 degrees.
A physician determined the heating blanket was on the high setting all night.
He was quickly transported to the pediatric intensive care unit, where he was later pronounced dead at 5.39pm.
He was put under a special blanket called a Bair Hugger (pictured) that forces warm air onto patients to raise their temperature
The hospital says it has launched its own investigation into the death. It has not disputed the health department’s conclusions but released a statement on Wednesday saying the boy ‘was brought to our Emergency Department for low body temperature and presumed sepsis.’
The hospital said they were made aware of the citations from the health department and that they ‘immediately began to implement measures to address this specific circumstance and enhance the overall safety of care.
‘As an organization that holds itself accountable for providing the highest quality care while protecting the safety of patients, employees and visitors, we recognize this situation as an unacceptable failure.
‘We expect more of ourselves as a system and as individuals committed to the highest standards of care for each person we serve. We have responded with the utmost of focus and determination to do better.
‘During the DOH on-site investigation, we immediately developed a corrective plan of action for each issue identified. Just as importantly, we launched our own investigation to determine what happened, how it happened and how to prevent it from ever occurring again.’