Mount Carmel settles two more wrongful-death lawsuits – News – The Columbus Dispatch

Mount Carmel Health System has settled two more lawsuits in the deaths of women cared for by a physician accused of ordering excessive amounts of painkiller for at least 35 intensive-care patients, court documents indicate.

The settlements, filed Monday in Franklin County Common Pleas Court, would bring to five the total number of cases settled among the 28 wrongful-death suits that have been filed since mid-January, when Mount Carmel announced its firing of Dr. William Husel.

>>Read our complete coverage on the Mount Carmel investigation

The Columbus-based health system alleges that Husel, 43, of Liberty Township near Dublin, ordered the excessive painkiller doses at two hospitals over a span of about four years, at levels high enough to be potentially fatal for 29 of the 35 patients.

Settlements were reached in the September 2014 death of Sherry White of North Hilltop and the October 2017 death of Peggy Francies of the Far West Side. Details of the agreements were not available late Monday afternoon.

Both women were 73 when they died at Mount Carmel West hospital in Franklinton.

According to a lawsuit and an Ohio Board of Nursing document that appears to reference White, she received two 100-microgram doses of the opioid fentanyl within 16 minutes. She died three minutes after the second dose.

Her death certificate says she died of septic shock from a urinary tract infection due to E.coli bacteria.

The lawsuit in Francies’ death alleges she received a single 200-microgram dose of fentanyl and died six minutes later. Her death certificate says she died of septic shock due to a complicated urinary tract infection from kidney cancer due to obesity.

Lawsuits in both deaths say that Mount Carmel’s electronic medical system failed to alert health-care providers to excessive painkiller dosages or that staff members ignored the alerts.

An Ohio Department of Health inspection report indicates that hospital employees overrode the system to sidestep alerts in the care of several other patients.

Lawsuits and records show that patients who received fentanyl ordered by Husel received dosages ranging from the two 100-microgram doses given to White to a single 2,000-microgram dose given to a woman in November.

Mount Carmel policy, updated after Husel’s Dec. 5 firing, sets the usual adult dosage of the drug at 25 to 100 micrograms, according to the health department’s inspection report.

jviviano@dispatch.com

@JoAnneViviano