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| Edward Lisoski and his wife, Leona, were married 63 years |
Edward Lisoski was a spirited 92-year-old former Marine who entered the
Martha T. Berry Medical Care Facility in Mount Clemens on June 4, hoping
the county-run nursing home could help him regain enough strength so
that he could maybe walk or drive again.
But after a series of “horrendous” incidences of alleged neglect by the
staff, Lisoski’s family was stunned seven weeks later to learn that he
had died.
Now, the son, daughter and widow of this World War II veteran from
Sterling Heights are demanding answers about his death and why their
numerous complaints about mistreatment were not properly addressed by
Martha T. Berry medical personnel.
In a letter to the three-member board that controls the facility, the
family wrote: “The pain, suffering and neglect he endured during his
last seven weeks on earth at your facility (was) as shocking as it was
inexcusable.”
County officials are scrambling to determine the sequence of events
during Lisoski’s stay at Martha T. Berry, with a doctor and the director
of nursing assigned to review the case.
But the director of the 217-bed facility, Jennifer Morgan, said she
believes that many of the family’s grievances contain “a lot of
inconsistencies and a lot of inaccuracies” compared to the charts
maintained by medical staff that chronicled Lisoski’s daily care.
board is engaged in a court fight with County Executive Mark Hackel and
the facility has been hit with fines and poor ratings due to
shortcomings in the care offered.
Lisoski, active in numerous community and political groups, suffered
serious health setbacks prior to his stay at Martha T. Berry. He had
kidney disease and underwent dialysis three times a week; circulation
problems led to the amputation of his left leg below the knee three
years ago; and when walking on his artificial leg became too difficult a
few months ago, he began using a wheelchair.
The letter sent to county officials last week is based on an extensive
journal kept by Lisoski’s daughter, Sherry Lisoski Williamson, during
his time as a patient, from June 4 to July 27.
• On July 22, Lisoski soiled himself at 4:30 p.m. The staff told the
family that they were short-handed, and the patient was not cleaned up
until 9 p.m.
• On June 16, Father’s Day, Lisoski received a large contingent of
family visitors but he was so overmedicated that he couldn’t speak and
couldn’t stay awake.
• On July 1, Lisoski started bleeding after a dialysis treatment and was
hospitalized at Troy Beaumont Hospital. It apparently took the Martha
T. Berry staff five hours, until 10 p.m., to realize he was missing. He
returned to the county facility on July 4 and was assigned to the third
of four different rooms during his 7-week stay. On July 7, his wife,
Leona, discovered that he had not been served dinner. The family then
learned that he had not been placed on a meal-delivery list for the
staff since his room-switch three days earlier.
• On July 23, some 24 hours after his assigned doctor had prescribed
morphine for Lisoski’s increasingly intense pain, the night staff was
unaware of that new protocol and would only administer Tylenol.
• Lisoski’s call button to alert a nurse when in discomfort was
constantly left on the floor next to his bed, where he could not reach
it. When his wife and son raced to Martha T. Berry at 5:45 a.m. on July
27 after being alerted that Lisoski was unresponsive, they arrived to
find the call button on the floor again. They were later told that he
had died in his sleep, apparently from kidney failure.
“I think this is heartbreaking and absolutely unacceptable. It’s
symptomatic of a larger issue,” said Assistant County Executive Al
Lorenzo, who added that County Executive Mark Hackel was “deeply
disturbed” by the family’s letter. “I … can tell you, if this was one of
our departments and we had complaints like this, we would be all over
it.”
The lawsuit underway in Macomb Circuit Court contains assertions by the
county Human Services Board (formerly the Social Services Board) that
oversees Martha T. Berry that they alone call the shots at medical
facility. They claim that Hackel has no authority in this matter and
that provisions in the voter-approved county charter do not apply to
them.
In 2009-10, the Human Services Board earned high praise from county
commissioners for gradually eliminating a multi-million dollar budget
deficit at Martha T. Berry, which receives almost all of its funding
from Medicare and Medicaid.
In May, Morgan, the director and administrator, received a prestigious
Athena Award in recognition of improvements she put into place at the
medical facility.
Earlier this year, Martha T. Berry was selected by the state to
participate in a pilot program that seeks to reduce costs and increase
efficiency for nursing homes with low-income patients.
a “much below average” rating – one out of five stars – based on
government inspections and staffing levels. These nationwide rankings of
nursing homes are based, in part, on consumer surveys.
In addition, state authorities have hit Martha T. Berry with seven fines
totaling more than $80,000 over the past two years for violating
nursing home standards.
In a two-paragraph response to the Lisoski family, Roger Facione,
chairman of the Human Services board, assured them that the care Edward
Lisoski received will be reviewed.
Every county in Michigan is served by a medical care facility like
Martha T. Berry and most counties have their own separate facility.
These county-run nursing homes are designed as a “safety net” for
low-income patients who cannot afford expensive private facilities.
in 1949 and is located on the outskirts of Mount Clemens, serves as home
to some of Macomb County’s most chronically ill residents. The
patients, ranging from teenagers to senior citizens, require long-term
care due to accident, illness or disease that has left them paralyzed,
comatose or incapacitated.
Lisoski’s son, Dennis, a Macomb Township resident, said that the family
agreed in June to switch his father from a Shelby Township nursing home
to Martha T. Berry because they toured the county facility and found an
impressive “state-of-the-art” nursing home where promises were made to
improve Edward Lisoski’s health. The facility had undergone a $22
million renovation several years ago.
What the family did not realize, Dennis Lisoski asserted, is that some
of the staff – nurses, nurse aides and social workers — were
indifferent or incompetent. The staffers assigned to watch over the
elderly Lisoski kept changing, and the night staff frequently blamed the
day staff for mistakes, and vice versa.
that is a nurse, gathered for three meetings with high-ranking staff but
the conditions for her father rarely improved.
She said she expected the county to engage in “damage control” if the story about her father ever became public.
But she commented that the Lisoskis are determined to ensure that the
treatment received by their father, a “proud Marine,” will cause Martha
T. Berry to re-evaluate their operations and that other families will be
spared the emotional distress that they suffered.
of dignity and with such apathy,” said Lisoski Williamson, a resident of
Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. “My father had a zest for life … and he was
well-respected. He didn’t deserve to have things end this way.”
