KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The daughter-in-law of a former Riverbend Post Acute Rehabilitation patient who died from COVID-19 is now in intensive care, unconscious and on a ventilator.
Carl Brewster, 88, died on April 5, two days after he was released from the Riverbend facility in Kansas City, Kansas.
Both his son, Steve, and daughter-in-law, Janis, are 68-year-old diabetics who tested positive for the virus after Carl returned home from Riverbend.
Steve had mild symptoms, including a low grade fever and a cough, but he said he hasn't had any symptoms since about April 15. But his wife is struggling to beat the virus and is now fighting for her life in a hospital.
"The worst nightmare of my entire life," Brewster said. "I'm certainly not over my dad passing and now my wife is in an induced coma. It's heartbreaking."
According to Steve, Janis is currently experiencing kidney failure and has had dialysis multiple times to get her kidneys functioning again.
However, so far, he said Janis' kidneys haven't been able to function on their own.
Additionally, Steve said Janis may have heart failure.
Doctors would like to move her to a special unit to address that potential problem. But because she's still testing positive for COVID-19, Brewster said it's not currently an option.
Brewster clearly places the blame on Riverbend for releasing his father from the facility without testing him after a positive COVID-19 test was reported there.
"If I was running Riverbend and I had one positive test, whether it's a worker or a patient, I wouldn't release anybody to go anywhere until I tested," Brewster said.
Brewster said to date, he's only received one phone call from Riverbend representatives. The phone call included Riverbend administrator Cory Schulte.
In that phone call, Brewster said Schulte told him Carl was released from the rehab center because he didn't have any coronavirus symptoms.
"I wouldn't call it a pleasant call. Before it was over, I was kind of calling the director a liar and he was calling me a liar because he was saying Dad was fine when he left there," Brewster said.
But Brewster said his father was showing symptoms before he was released from Riverbend.
"He was even coughing on the phone as early as March 30th," Brewster said. "If I could hear Dad cough on a phone call that would last 20, 30 minutes, I know they were aware he was coughing over there."
Brewster has now retained the Smith Mohlman law firm to represent him.
"A lot of my family, a lot of my friends told me I should get some representation. They said this is such an extreme situation," Brewster said.
Brewster's attorney, Rachel Smith, said they intend to file a lawsuit when it's appropriate.
"But we don't know what's going to happen with Janis right now. God willing, she'll recover," Smith said.
Smith and her partner, Mike Mohlman, said they intend to file two lawsuits in Wyandotte County.
The first one would be a wrongful death lawsuit in Carl's case and the second one would relate to Janis' case.
"The evidence that we have right now is that (Riverbend) knew that there was exposure at the facility and they simply did not take the appropriate measures to protect their residents and third parties like Steve and Janis," Mohlman said.
"This facility allowed contagious workers in to care for an incredibly vulnerable population and then expelled those folks from the home, which endangered the entire community," Smith said.
Mohlman said it did not appear that Riverbend learned any lessons from an early coronavirus outbreak in Washington state, where two-thirds of residents were sickened at a nursing home facility.
"The experience up in Washington state certainly should have given them a heads up as to the problems they could potentially face. And it doesn't appear they learned any lesson from that," Mohlman said.
The plans for lawsuits on behalf of the Brewster family come as there are rumblings about protecting care facilities from coronavirus lawsuits.
Smith and Mohlman call a Kansas order in that regard "ambiguous" and said it may not apply to facility directors.
"We would always prefer to hold the facility and its management structure responsible because a lot of time, the individual health care workers are doing the very best they can in the nursing home environment," Mohlman said.
"It would be a crying shame if the nursing home lobby and the insurance lobby are successful in getting blanket immunity when there has been so much negligence that has caused so much damage," Smith said.
Brewster said one question he'd like answered is whether or not his dad is being counted among the Riverbend deaths.
A spokeswoman for the Unified Government Public Health Department said she couldn't answer that specific question due to privacy laws.
However, she did say health department investigators trace what happen with outbreaks or clusters like Riverbend and would include numbers for those outbreaks if investigators determine they're connected.
"It's a tragedy and it was avoidable, that's the saddest part," Smith said.
Due to additional pending litigation from other families, Schulte has previously indicated he can no longer comment to the news media.
He did issue a statement earlier this month that said any dispute between Riverbend and the Brewster family shouldn't be discussed in the news media.
