A Hillsborough County jury has awarded $70.8 million to a woman who suffered permanent injuries after providers at a Tampa General Hospital free-standing emergency department failed to diagnose and treat a life-threatening condition.
Chiaka Stewart, then 38, was transported by ambulance to TGH’s Brandon Healthplex in July 2021 due to a severe headache she described as "the worst she had ever had," according to court documents. Despite risk factors for blood clots, nurse practitioner Heather Anderson did not order a CT scan or consult a neurologist, according to court documents.
Instead, Stewart underwent bloodwork, received a COVID-19 test and was administered a “headache cocktail” before her discharge about four hours later.
Stewart’s condition worsened over the next 30 hours, with "right sided headache and left sided weakness and numbness," court documents said. She suffered a stroke and was taken to TGH’s main campus on Davis Islands, where imaging revealed blood clots in her brain, her attorneys said.
Blood thinners were administered, but the delay left her permanently disabled, with blindness, left-side paralysis, a stutter and cognitive impairments, her attorneys said.
Stewart’s attorneys, from the firm Searcy Denney Scarola Barnhart & Shipley, argued in court that had a CT scan been performed in the Brandon ER, the clots would have been identified and treated, preventing the stroke.
Anderson was employed by InPhyNet Contracting Services, a subsidiary of TeamHealth, a national company that partners with TGH to provide medical professionals.
TGH, InPhyNet and Anderson were named as co-defendants.
After the two-week trial, which concluded Sept. 25, the jury found Anderson was negligent and acting as an agent of TGH, according to the verdict form.
According to court documents, the emergency room physician during the Brandon visit, Dr. Danius Drukteinis, was also a co-defendant. According to attorneys, he reached a settlement before the trial began.
