ATLANTA, Ga. — Eighteen-year-old Quachasity Houston believes she’d be a mother today if not for bad medical care.
She had only four days with her daughter, Zhe’Mani, before the brain dead newborn was taken off life support.
Hers was one of at least four child birth deaths at South Fulton Medical Center in two months last summer.
On Friday those four women, and a fifth whose 2-year-old daughter suffered birth defects in 2010, all filed lawsuits against the East Point hospital.
“You can carry the baby inside of you, moving, and you become in tune with this child and you can’t have it,” said Shan Davis.
“The doctor responded that if she wanted to find out what happened to the child, she’d have to pay $1,500 for an autopsy,” Maria del Socorro Lopez said through an interpreter.
Their lawyer claims that in each case, poor or wrong decisions by hospital personnel were to blame.
“This is horrid care, this is unbelievable,” said attorney James Hugh Potts II during a news conference at his Atlanta office.
South Fulton Medical has been losing millions of dollars for years and will soon merge with Atlanta Medical Center.
The nonprofit Leapfrog Group recently gave the hospital a “D” rating for patient safety and medical mix-ups.
The hospital claims it provides safe and quality healthcare.
It issued a statement saying, “We deny allegations of negligence…and will vigorously defend ourselves through the legal process.”
When asked if four baby deaths in two months was unusually high for South Fulton Medical Center, attorney Potts said he doesn’t know yet.
But he insists that in each of these cases, it was four too many
