An 86-year-old woman from Massachusetts somehow got locked inside a dialysis clinic for several hours on Saturday after the staff left work, apparently having forgotten her.
“She’s shaken, but got her all cleaned up put her in bed,” Pam Crosby said of her mother, 86-year-old Maureen Perry, CBS Boston reported. Her mother, who is temporarily bedridden, was left at the Fresenius Dialysis Clinic on Merrimack Street in Methuen.
Her granddaughter, Erica Crosby, took a photo of her. She was alone and appeared distraught while she was locked in the room.
“At first, I was enraged, then concerned, and then disgusted,” she told CBS. “I couldn’t believe it.”
An ambulance company told the family the dialysis facility was locked when personnel arrived to take her back to a rehab center. The family then decided to drive there.
“I called 911 and I said, ‘I can’t believe I am about to report this, but my grandmother is locked in the dialysis center,’” Crosby told the station.
“We pulled up to this facility. I get out of the car and she’s in there,” Crosby added to Fox25. “The lights are completely off, the building’s locked up, and I’m banging on the window, ‘Are you OK? Can you hear me?’ And she’s shrugging her shoulders.”
“I am in healthcare and this is disgusting, absolutely disgusting,” added Crosby. “Someone needs to be held accountable for this. This is absolutely not okay.”
Perry was inside the Fresenius Dialysis Clinic on Merrimack Street in Methuen, which closed three hours earlier.
Firefighters then unlocked the building and let the family inside.
A spokesperson for Fresenius sent a statement to Fox25: “This past Saturday, a staff member at our Methuen dialysis facility closed the clinic following the completion of our second shift treatments. He did not see any patients in the treatment room and mistakenly believed that all of our patients had left the facility. Unfortunately, one of our patients remained in her dialysis chair at the time. She was later safely returned to her residence.”
The statement read: “We deeply regret what occurred and have spoken with the patient’s family. Our patients’ care and safety are our top priorities and we have initiated additional processes and safeguards to ensure that an incident such as this does not happen again. We apologize to the patient, her family, and the entire community.”
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