EVERETT, Wash. — A family filed a wrongful death and negligence claim against Providence Regional Medical Center in Everett claiming a woman died in the emergency room waiting for care.
Sean and Cheyenna Costello met as neighbors and were instantly inseparable.
“It was just like one of those things that was just meant to be,” said Marlena Grundy, the attorney representing Costello’s family.
On Nov. 2, 2022, Sean Costello would leave Providence Everett without his wife, and their children without a mother.
“When you're 41 years old and generally healthy, and you go to the ER, with pain in your stomach. No one thinks that a few hours later, that person is going to be gone,” Grundy said.
Grundy detailed what happened that evening in a negligence and wrongful death complaint filed in King County last week.
The complaint said Cheyenna was experiencing worsening stomach pain and her husband Sean called 911. Firefighters responded and rushed her to the hospital where during a first assessment a doctor said she needed immediate care, documenting Costello as “critically ill with significant risk to decompensate and even death, requiring prompt bedside evaluation and intervention.”
Instead, the complaint said she was left in a wheelchair in a busy emergency room. Grundy said Sean did everything right by asking where she was in the queue multiple times and telling nurses she didn’t look well.
“About four and a half hours later, she started seizing for lack of a better word and was then rushed back into a room where she later died,” Grundy said.
According to the complaint, Costello had low potassium and pancreatitis. The coroner noted she had acute and chronic pancreatitis which resulted in probable cardiac dysrhythmia.
Grundy is now investigating staffing levels at the hospital that night. An issue KING 5 has been covering for more than a year. A few months before Costello died one nurse described the conditions.
“When I started to see people dying waiting for us to help them," a nurse said. "I have to say something.”
Most recently nurses were sounding the alarm two weeks ago.
Grundy said the goal of the lawsuit is to get answers for Cheyenna’s family and make sure this doesn’t happen to anyone else.
“When we go to the emergency room, we are at our most vulnerable and we have to rely on the trust of the medical professional there. We need to speak about these things and we need to be aware of them. We need to be talking to our legislators,” Grundy said.
The suit is in the discovery phase and it could go to a jury trial.
Providence Everett said it can’t comment on an active lawsuit.
KING 5 did ask about the ongoing staffing issue and is awaiting a response.