State investigators are blaming the operators of a Bloomington care center in the death of an elderly client who arrived for a week of rehab and ended up dead following her fourth fall within three days.
The Martin Luther Care Center was negligent because its nursing staff failed to notify the client's doctor after the repeated late-night falls in early October, according to details of a state Health Department investigation released Wednesday.
The family identified the woman Thursday as Mary L. Baker, of Burnsville, who was 82 when she died on Oct. 5 at Fairview Southdale Hospital in Edina.
"I would think they would have kept better watch over her," said Freda Ward, a sister who shared a home with Baker the last 26 years of her life. "I visited every day [at the center] and sat with her after dinner."
Ward said she was there on Oct. 4 -- Baker had already fallen three times at the center -- and her sister complained "a little bit about a headache. … I told her to tell the nurse." It was the last time Ward saw her sister alive.
Shortly after 10:30 p.m., Baker fell for her fourth time in three days and suffered what the state called a "catastrophic" brain injury. Staff waited for six hours after finding her on the bathroom floor before contacting Baker's doctor, the investigators found.
The doctor ordered a nurse to get the resident to an emergency room. Paramedics arrived to find Baker unresponsive. She was taken to the hospital and was dead two hours later with severe bleeding on the brain, the report continued.
Even though the facility had policies in place addressing falls, "Neglect occurred when facility staff failed to initiate adequate safety interventions in response to the resident's repeated falls."
