Sep. 8--Idolly Grant's only daughter, Judith, decided to put her elderly mother in East Neck Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in August 2002, reasoning that staff at the West Babylon facility would better take care of her mother than she could, she said.
Three years later, Idolly Grant was dead at age 86 from severe neglect, according to a lawsuit filed yesterday in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn.
In the suit, Judith Grant, of Brooklyn, claims that East Neck and two other facilities that treated her mother -- Good Samaritan Hospital Medical Center in West Islip and Our Lady of Consolation Nursing and Rehabilitative Care Center in West Islip -- neglected her so badly that she lost 45 pounds off her 109-pound frame, and that they allowed her to develop painful, and lethal, bedsores.
The three facilities "abused the trust and the care that Ms. Judith Grant placed in those facilities in taking care of her mom," said Derek Sells of the Manhattan-based Cochran Firm. Sells was flanked by Grant and two other attorneys at the news conference.
Joseph S. Rosato, another attorney, said the cause of death was "infection" from bedsores.
Kimberly Volean, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Health, said the agency had launched an investigation into the claims in the lawsuit, even as East Neck's attorney dismissed them.
"We categorically deny any wrongdoing on the part of the nursing home," said Howard Fensterman, a Lake Success attorney representing East Neck in the lawsuit.
He said staffers advised Grant that her mother was not eating and offered to provide a feeding tube -- which Fensterman said Judith declined.
"She was refusing to eat and, as a result, she was dehydrating," he said. "The family did not want the tube put in her, so the nursing home discharged her to Good Samaritan," where she was treated from May until July 2005.
Officials at Our Lady of Consolation, where she stayed for about a month after leaving the hospital, declined to comment. Good Samaritan also declined to comment, citing patient privacy and hospital policy of not commenting on litigation. Grant died at Good Samaritan on Aug. 21, 2005.
The 22-page lawsuit claims that "Idolly Grant suffered severe physical and psychological injuries and was rendered sick, sore, lame and disabled prior to her death," and that she suffered "emotional distress, shock, fright, fear and pain."
"I was horrified," Judith Grant said when asked for her reaction to finding out her mother had developed bedsores.
She said she visited her mother every day and only became aware of the bedsores when her mother was transferred to Good Samaritan in May 2005. She said she was reassured by nursing home and hospital staff that things were going well when she inquired about her mother's condition.
"They promised me they could offer her the medical care she needed," Grant said. "I was told everything was OK."
But Sells said Idolly Grant developed bedsores at each facility, and that she became dehydrated, which caused her to lose weight.
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Copyright (c) 2006, Newsday, Melville, N.Y.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
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