WOMAN’S DEATH TRIGGERS LAWSUIT
St. Petersburg Times – St. Petersburg, Fla.
Date August 7, 2007
Relatives say she was given drugs for mental illness that were already in her system. Tina Galanos was despondent and suicidal when deputies brought her to Community Hospital in 2005, her family says. She suffered from a host of mental and physical ailments. Doctors at the hospital believed she posed a threat to herself. Three days later, she died. Now her family says the hospital and doctors were the true threat.
Galanos’ family filed a wrongful death lawsuit Friday against Community Hospital of New Port Richey and psychiatrists Amarjeet Dhillon and Raghu Devabhaktuni in Pinellas-Pasco circuit court. The suit alleges the hospital and doctors failed to screen Galanos’ blood for the psychotropic drugs she was taking for mental illness. They also failed to take into account physical health problems as well, like heart and lung ailments, the suit said. The suit said Galanos was moved from the hospital’s emergency room to the behavioral health unit, where she was given more of the same drugs. In fact, she was given too much of the same drugs, according to the family’s lawyer, who said the medical examiner later determined her cause of death was multidrug toxicity.
“They basically put her in the hospital and put her up in the behavioral health unit without realizing what drugs … she had in her system,” said the family’s civil attorney Jeffrey Hensley. “Once they put her up on the psychiatric floor, they continued to medicate her to the point where they overdosed her and killed her.” Community Hospital spokeswoman Mary Sommise said the hospital could not comment on pending litigation or on Galanos’ case because of federal rules that protect a patient’s privacy. The psychiatrists named in the suit could not be reached for comment. The Medical Examiner’s Office did not return a call Monday for comment.
Galanos was admitted to the hospital, against her will, on Feb. 19, 2005. She was found dead in her hospital room on Feb. 22, 2005, the suit said. Hours before her death, Hensley said, Galanos was already showing ill effects from the medication. “She was so sluggish in a group psychotherapy session,” he said, “that she had to be walked back to her hospital bed and put back to bed.” The New Port Richey woman was 44. She left behind a husband, Milton, and four children. Her stepfather, John Forbes, is representing her estate. The suit seeks more than $15,000 in damages, which is just a technical number that qualifies the suit for circuit court. The family can seek much more than that. It would not have taken much to save her life, the family’s attorney said. “If they would have done the full toxicology panel – that’s what they’re supposed to do – they would have saved her life,” Hensley said. “But they didn’t. They did a quickie, simple blood screen and before they even had the results, they put her on the pysch floor and gave her medications.”