Kathleen A. Gagne

Kathie Gagne died 4,510 days ago.

July 3rd, 2013 @ 8:44 am

Early on the morning of July 3rd, 2013, I received an email from someone named Katherine Perez, a legal assistant at Mathis & Murphy, P.A. She wrote:

From: Katherine Perez
Sent: July 3, 2013 @ 08:44 AM PDT
Subject: Medical Authorizations

Mr. Gagne:

I am attempting to obtain additional medical records for Kathleen from the ambulance who transported her and from Halifax Medical Center. Attached are authorizations for your review and execution to this end.

Kindly sign and return these to me at your earliest convenience.

Thank you for your assistance in this regard.

Katie Perez

Two fairly standard HIPAA release PDFs were attached to the email.

Reinforcements?

June 24th, 2013 @ 9:14 am

Kelly Mathis of Mathis & Murphy, P.A. just responded to my previous email. He wrote:

Sent: June 24, 2013 @ 08:11 AM PDT

This helps tremendously.

Do you mind if I get the opinion/assistance of another attorney?

Kelly

I replied almost immediately with:

Sent: June 24, 2013 @ 08:14 AM PDT

I welcome any progress however achieved, and am happy to offer every assistance possible.

Primary Concerns

June 21st, 2013 @ 1:33 pm

This afternoon I replied to the email I received yesterday from Kelly Mathis:

Sent: June 21, 2013 @ 01:20 PM PDT

Kelly,

I don’t even know where to begin. I’m not sure I know exactly what you mean when you ask for “bullet points of your other concerns”, so I am going to do my best to summarize my concerns specifically related to Woodland Terrace.

1. Were any steps taken to attempt to save her life when it was discovered that something was wrong? The nurse on duty at the time could not even tell me how much time elapsed between when my mother was discovered unresponsive and when the paramedics were called or when the paramedics arrived.
http://kathiegagne.com/2012/08/12/sail-on-silver-girl/

2. The nurse on duty told me she did not know what the details were because she was busy preparing my mother’s chart and medical records for the paramedics, but the representative at the hospital told me they received no documentation at all when the paramedics arrived, and the paramedics told them they had not received any documentation from Woodland Terrace.
http://kathiegagne.com/2012/08/12/evacuated-to-the-emergency-room/

3. My mother died on Sunday. The Friday before that she was rushed to the hospital. (http://kathiegagne.com/2012/08/10/a-trip-to-the-er/) A representative at the hospital told me that her chart indicated that she was being administered Risperdal, even though just a few days before that I was promised by Woodland Terrace that they would not administer Risperdal to my mother. When I called Woodland Terrace about this, I was very, very, very rudely rebuffed; was told that the administrator of the entire facility — who had been very kind and helpful — was no longer employed there; and was LITERALLY hung up on multiple times. I had an investigator from the Department of Children and Families check in on my mom (http://kathiegagne.com/2012/08/11/investigator-brown/) and the next day she died.

4. Every time I attempted to speak with my mother while she was at Woodland Terrace was an ordeal. Their phones would not work correctly, nurses would not understand how to transfer calls, the phone would ring for minutes without being answered, they would not be able to FIND my mother in the facility. I called every single day for thirty-seven days and on only a handful of those times was I able to get my mother on the phone.
http://kathiegagne.com/2012/07/08/called-woodland-terrace/
http://kathiegagne.com/2012/07/09/trying-to-talk-to-mom/
http://kathiegagne.com/2012/07/10/rude-rachel/
http://kathiegagne.com/2012/07/16/trying-to-talk-to-mom-2/
http://kathiegagne.com/2012/07/19/still-trying/
http://kathiegagne.com/2012/07/26/lost-and-found/

5. Any time I called to get information about what drugs were being administered to my mother, I was met with either hostility or complete confusion. They could never reliably tell me which medications she was being administered, and were frequently mistaken.
http://kathiegagne.com/2012/07/08/prescription-confusion/
http://kathiegagne.com/2012/07/13/early-morning-phone-call/

6. I have documentation of multiple falls and / or injuries my mother suffered while at Woodland Terrace:
http://kathiegagne.com/2012/07/07/found-her-on-the-floor/
http://kathiegagne.com/2012/07/09/another-fall/
http://kathiegagne.com/2012/07/16/a-small-cut/
http://kathiegagne.com/2012/07/26/back-to-halifax/
http://kathiegagne.com/2012/08/09/a-fall/

7. I was told that my mother was kept on mats on the floor:
http://kathiegagne.com/2012/07/21/being-kept-on-the-floor/

Here is some supplemental information about Risperdal:
http://kathiegagne.com/2012/08/14/all-about-risperdal/
http://www.oregonlive.com/health/index.ssf/2008/06/fda_advises_against_certain_de.html
http://www.oregonlive.com/business/index.ssf/2010/01/post_36.html
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12520151
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18281175

Please let me know if this is the sort of information you wanted me to provide. Please let me know when you receive this message and if there is anything I can do differently or better to help you.

Reviewing the Records

June 20th, 2013 @ 5:37 pm

This afternoon Kelly Mathis of Mathis & Murphy, P.A. responded to the email I sent him on Monday:

From: Kelly Mathis
Sent: June 20, 2013 @ 12:38 PM PDT
Subject: RE: Medical Records Review Status

David,

I have been reviewing the records. My initial focus is on the respiradal issue. It seems clear that they gave this to your mother twice despite the fact that you had not authorized it. I don’t know, however, whether this caused her any ill effects. I am also looking into the general care issues.

Can you put together a very abbreviated list of bullet points of your other concerns to help me try to narrow the issues?

Thanks,

Kelly

Yet Another Week

June 17th, 2013 @ 10:01 am

This morning I sent a follow-up to my last email to Kelly Mathis of Mathis & Murphy, P.A.:

Sent: June 17, 2013 @ 09:58 AM PST
Subject: Medical Records Review Status

Hey Kelly,

It’s been two weeks since our last communication and ten days since I emailed you asking for an estimate.

I understand that reviewing my mother’s medical records is likely a complicated and time-consuming process. I don’t want to repeatedly bother you for updates, so I’m just looking for any sort of idea of how long you think this next step will take or when you think I should check in with you again.

In nine days I’ll be forty. It will be my first birthday without my mother. And we are quickly approaching the first anniversary of her death.

Another Week

June 7th, 2013 @ 10:19 am

I haven’t heard from anyone at Mathis & Murphy, P.A. since we (finally) received copies of mom’s medical records from Woodland Terrace a week ago. This morning I emailed Kelly Mathis to ask for a status update.

Sent: June 7, 2013 @ 10:18 AM PST

Hey Kelly,

Do you have any sort of estimate of how long it will take to review my mother’s medical records?

After waiting for over nine months, I’m sure you can understand that I am very anxious to move forward.

Thank you sincerely,

Medical Records Received!

May 31st, 2013 @ 1:55 pm

Almost exactly nine months after I started trying to get them, I finally have copies of mom’s medical records from the thirty-seven days she spent at Woodland Terrace. Just before two o’clock in the afternoon on May 31st, 2013, I started downloading eight emails from Kelly Mathis of Mathis & Murphy, P.A. Each message contained a PDF comprised of dozens and dozens of scanned and faxed pages.

It is unsurprising that the majority of them are barely legible. The handwriting is deplorably bad, notes are incomplete, pages are copied, scanned, or faxed poorly so edges are missing, there is a complete and total lack of organization which is breathtaking, etc. But at least we now have them.

I sent Kelly this email as soon as I realized what was in my Inbox:

Sent: May 31, 2013 @ 2:42 PM PDT
Subject: Medical Records Received!

Kelly,

This afternoon I received from you, via your legal assistant’s email address, nine (9) separate emails, each with a single attachment.

So what is the next step? What do we do now?

Thank you!

Later that night I sent this follow-up email to Kelly:

Sent: June 1, 2013 @ 1:13 AM PDT
Subject: Missing Email?

Hey Kelly,

I seem to be missing an email.

I thought you had sent nine (9) messages, each with a PDF attachment, because the first one I received has a subject line of “Records Email 1” and the last one I received has a subject line of “Email 9”. But I do not have an email with the subject line “Email 5”, so I actually only have eight (8) documents.

Can you please check to see if one your messages was not delivered or if you inadvertently mislabeled them and there are really only eight?

Thank you again. I anxiously await news from you regarding what the next step in this process is.

Sincerely,

Kelly responded to me the following Monday with:

Sent: June 3, 2013 @ 6:22 AM PDT
Subject: RE: Missing Email?

David,

You are correct. There are only 8 emails. I misnumbered them.

Our job now is […].

Kelly

The Waiting

May 29th, 2013 @ 8:33 am

On the morning of May 29th I received a blind carbon copy of an email, sent at 11:30 AM on the East coast, that Kelly Mathis of Mathis & Murphy sent to James Morrison of Quintairos, Prieto, Wood & Boyer, P.A., the law firm representing Woodland Terrace. Kelly still hasn’t responded directly to the voice mail I left him last week or to the emails I sent him on the 28th or 24th, which is a little frustrating; but I guess by BCCing me on the email he is sort of keeping me updated. And I suppose that he has nothing to tell me, since — as usual — nothing has happened.

Here is the entire message Kelly sent to Mr. Morrison:

Will it be necessary to file suit just to get the records?

At 10:45 AM (on the West coast) on May 30th, I sent this question via email to Kelly:

Kelly,

Has Mr. Morrison responded to this email yet?

Status Quo

May 28th, 2013 @ 10:06 am

Mom has been dead for nine and a half months now, and I have been trying unsuccessfully to get Woodland Terrace — the nursing facility where she died — to give me copies of her medical records since about two weeks after that. Their latest stall tactic is to say they won’t deliver the records until we’ve paid for photocopying them, and they continue to delay by not sending us an invoice to pay. On Monday, May 20th, Mr. Morrison of Quintairos, Prieto, Wood & Boyer, P.A. — the law firm representing Woodland Terrace — told Kelly Mathis of Mathis & Murphy, P.A. that we, “should get invoice this week.”

I told Mr. Mathis on the 20th that I had little faith that they would actually do that, and of course I was right. I emailed and called him on the 24th to ask him what we should do next, but he has yet to reply to my email or voice mail. So this morning I sent him this email:

Kelly,

Have you received an invoice yet? Have you had any further contact with Mr. Morrison at all?

As a reminder: On May 20th Mr. Morrison indicated that he spoke to Woodland Terrace on the 17th and that we, “should get invoice this week,” which would have been by the 24th.

PS: I tried contacting you via email and voice mail on the 24th.

Another Week.

May 24th, 2013 @ 9:49 am

Just after seven o’clock this morning, Friday, May 24th, 2013, I emailed Kelly Mathis of Mathis & Murphy, P.A. in regards to my quixotic attempt to get Woodland Terrace to release my mother’s medical records. I was specifically writing in response to Monday’s email exchange between Mr. Mathis and Mr. Morrison of Quintairos, Prieto, Wood & Boyer, P.A. — the law firm representing for Woodland Terrace — in which Mr. Morrison stated that Mr. Mathis should receive an invoice this week.

The “invoice” to which Mr. Morrison refers is to proactively compensate Woodland Terrace for the printing and photocopying of the medical records; their (most recent) excuse for not yet having provided me with the medical records is that this invoice — which has never been seen by anyone — is unpaid.

I wrote:

Kelly,

Do you expect to hear from Mr. Morrison today?

David Gagne

I hadn’t received a response from Mr. Mathis by 9:45 AM, so I called his office. His receptionist said he was at lunch, so I left him a voice mail asking him to return my call.