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Glisan Care Center, a Southeast Portland nursing home, is facing a $4 million lawsuit following a resident’s death last year.
The lawsuit, filed in Multnomah County Circuit Court on Wednesday, alleges that Charlene Patton “suffered incredible mistreatment and neglect at Glisan Care Center,” ultimately leading to her death from septic shock. She developed seven pressure ulcers during her year-long stay at the facility.
“[The facility] rarely, if ever, washed Ms. Patton’s face, brushed her teeth, or changed her pillowcases— with darker shades of brown and yellow grime appearing on her skin,” the complaint alleges. “She also was left in soiled undergarments and frequently left in her own feces and urine for hours before being attended to.”
Patton died on March 12, 2023 after being admitted a year earlier for rehabilitation following a hip fracture. During her stay, the understaffed facility failed to provide “wound care” or “timely assessments” of Patton’s condition, the complaint alleges. “She went from being a fighter and full of life to not being able to speak or identify her family in the hospital,” it says.
State inspection records provide some credence to the lawsuit’s claims. The month following Patton’s death, state inspectors cited the facility for failing to respond to call lights in a timely manner and, in two cases, failing “to comprehensively assess pressure ulcers upon admission and readmission to the facility.”
Inspectors ultimately declared residents of the facility in “immediate jeopardy” after learning that another resident had fallen and nearly died two months early. Staff had failed to administer a prescribed anticonvulsant.
The facility was fined nearly a $100,000 by its federal regulator shortly thereafter and the state issued unspecified limitations on its license, although they have since been lifted.
“Not every facility has such chronic neglect,” says the family’s lawyer, Kristen McCall. “We want to make sure this doesn’t happen to anybody else,” says Patton’s daughter, Tasha.
Representatives of Glisan Care Center, whose operations were recently sold to a publicly-traded Utah holding company, did not respond to requests for comment.