Note 9 A place of death: "Integrated Health Services"

This is a vague statement, since there are three IHS facilities in Bradenton [also home health services]. No street name or address is given.

Note 20a method of disposition: cremation is checked. Normally an autopsy is always done, when the [nursing home death] body will be cremated.

22 A has a signature which could be that of Dr. Sharma. Dr. Sharma, however, was not the physician, who supervised Zoe's death during the two days before she died. Dr. Sharma or someone signed the death certificate three days after Zoe's death.

Normally, Dr. Unaeze would have been required to sign the death certificate. Dr. Unaeze is hardly found at all in either the IHS or Blake Medical Center Records. Also, although it is a Medicare requirement to bill, when a Medicare beneficiary is treated by a Medicare physician, there are no bills for Dr. Unaeze.

Look at 26 part one: " enter the diseases, injuries or complications that caused the death. Do not enter the mode of dying such as cardiac or respiratory arrest, shock or heart failure. List only one cause on each line."

a. Cardiorespiratory arrest -see above-" do not enter "

b. Cerebrovascular accident [CVA]

c. Atherosclerotic heart disease

To the right of each disease under " approximate interval between onset and death " IS NOT ONE SINGLE WORD!

Furthermore, Zoe did not have atherosclerotic heart disease. She had markedly little plaque and elastic blood vessels. The medical definition of CVA is usually "acute" undefined symptoms.

Zoe's only known CVA was over a month earlier, and by the time she arrived at the hospital,

she had well defined symptoms!

Zoe died after having signs of a blood clot - pain in the right chest on the evening of 2/11/99. She was in excruciating pain. Carol wanted her taken to the emergency room immediately and was talked out of it by assurances that it was " only a cramp ".

Zoe received as a painkiller, Darvocet-100, which is not more than a habit forming aspirin.

Zoe never received any other medication or test. Dr. Unaeze ordered via telephone an emergency sonogram to rule out DVT at 6:10 a.m. He then canceled it via telephone at 6:45 a.m.. He then treated her for a four-day-old fall, which had already been checked out as being harmless.

Zoe's pains started in her chest and moved to her leg, after we stood her up to change her sheets on 2/11/99. AND NO EMERGENCY ACTION WAS TAKEN until after her death in the afternoon of 2/13/99. [A slipped disk only feels like it may kill you. A blood clot [DVT]can kill you].

IHS reports Zoe being dead already on the 12th, one day early. The official tracking form [MDS] in her records shows the wrong physician, the wrong death date and AHCA found nothing wrong with this.

The death certificate is obviously false. Under Part B " left parotitis " was surgery and had taken place on February 9th. [both the surgery records, and the records of transfer are missing from the IHS file].

The emergency x-ray, which was ordered after the sonogram was canceled on 2/12/99 took over five hours to arrive at IHS. Dr. Unaeze wrote an obvious false report, which did not match up with the nurse's notes, which are available to Carol.

All these are suspicious circumstances, which under state law must be investigated or at least reported, since the circumstances were very unusual.

AHCA has no desire to point out anything wrong. By not doing so, it allows the same sad circumstances to happen over and over again. Elder abuse is institutionalized by such practices.

AHCA could find not one thing wrong with Zoe's care. How is this possible with the number of violations found in her medical records ALONE?

These discrepancies have been pointed out to AHCA. But because of the monstrous criminality, the authorities have no desire to pursue the issue. By ignoring fraud and abuse, the Agency for Health Care Administration is assuring corporate profits for the unethical health care and poor treatment and abuse of the patients. This makes no mention of the obvious skyrocketing medical costs in the Medicare/Medicaid programs.

Under 28 case reported to medical examiner (yes or no)-" yes " is entered. This was according to my inquiry, reported by the funeral service director and not by the nursing home as it should have been. Zoe's body should not have been removed with out reporting it first.

Carol reported a detailed complaint to the medical board through AHCA in October of last year (2001). She has heard nothing and assumes nothing is being done, because AHCA has no desire to find anything wrong in this particular case.