A Minnesota woman filed a lawsuit against a health care provider after her newborn was mistakenly given to another mother at a hospital and breastfed.
Tammy Van Dyke, of Apple Valley, recently filed the lawsuit in Hennepin County seeking more than $50,000 in damages for an incident that happened in December 2012. The lawsuit contends that Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis failed to care for her infant who was mistakenly taken to the wrong mother.
Van Dyke, her son and the other mother had to go through “unnecessary medical treatments and tests” because of the mix-up, according to the lawsuit.
“In good faith you drop your child off at the hospital nursery with the nurses,” Van Dyke said in a previous interview with KSTP-TV (http://bit.ly/2gLYCkv). “Never in a million years would
you think this could happen or would happen.”
The hospital’s operator, Allina Health, said at the time that hospital procedures required staff to match codes on the infant’s and mother’s identification bands, and it appeared those procedures were not followed.