defective oxygen machine

What is the name of your state? georgia
my father is on a oxgyen machine 24/7 with emphysema and a 30% heart blockage, he has a machine from a medical supply company and he is on medicare. recently he was put in the hospital for 10 days his oxygen level was very low, we contacted the medical service co about the machine they came out and when the tech checked the machine ha said it didnt go over 1 liter and he was supposed to be on 3 liters, he had that machine for 19 months and no one ever came out and checked it, they now have replaced it with a new one. my question is is the medical co negelgent and should we seek legal help, he has no secondary ins and 10 days in the hostipal is very costly. thank you for your help

You don't say if you rented the machine or had bought it. A lot depends on your contract with the supplier. If your contract called for a routine maintenance, you may have case. Read your contract or purchase agreement carefully. You should be able to see your choices for action after reading it. Usually if the contract calls for a maintenance schedule, and the company does not meet this, you can sue. Now, sueing doesn't answer all your problems. Your father is how old? He has emphysema at what level? His heart is diseased, at what stage? True he has accumulated some hospital bills. Depending on what you find out when you read your contract you may have a reason to ask the supplier of your oxygen machine to come up with some money, or to sue them.

[ellencee]

levans1963
This may sound as nuts to you as it does to me, but oxygen concentrators deliver the same rate of oxygen at 1L/m as they do at 5L/M because of the + or - % feature. On all O2 concentrators that I have seen, the flow rates and oxygen delivery rates are on the front of the machine. 1L/m to 5L/m yields a flow rate of 92% oxygen. Above 5L/m yields 95% + or - a %, and requires an adaptive component to achieve this concentration.

Please do not confuse flow rates with actual oxygenation of the blood or total oxygen intake. An oxygen concentrator delivers oxygen to the patient via nasal canulas or venti masks as a supplement to the oxygen the patient is also breathing in the normal room air.

Administering oxygen to a person with emphysema is a catch 22 at best. The person needs a little more oxygen but not enough to raise the oxygen level because their lungs can not rid themselves of the waste products of breathing. So, the CO2 level rises and causes CO2 narcosis, which means the brain interprets that to mean the person does not need to breathe anymore.

Basically, the oxygen supplement for your father was a comfort measure only. A little more oxygen than in normal room air helps to compensate for his impaired heart function. The extra oxygen simply keeps his heart from beating faster in an effort to deliver the right amount of oxygen to the body's cells.

You will have a difficult time proving that your father's oxygen level would not have been below normal 'but for' the malfunction of the O2 concentrator.

This is just a follow up to ellencee's post, who is familiar with my wifes physical problems, one of which is COPD.

She also is on CO2, 24/7, at 2L/M. The machine she uses is rented and checked weekly, calibrated if necessary, or replaced according to the findings. Our only responsibility as renters is to clean the filters, one located on each side, weekly.

A few weeks back my wife was having an especially difficult time breathing so I, wrongly, increased the flow rate to 5, then 6, then finally 7L/M and the situation became increasingly worse. I had to call paramedics and she was transported to the ER. The problem she was experiencing was carbon dioxide retention, not lack of CO2. In other words her lungs were not disposing of the carbon dioxide, a by product of CO2, fast enough. So, from what I now understand, and ellencee can correct me if I am wrong, the more I increased the CO2 output the more I added to the problem. Ellencee can correct me if I am mistaken about this also. The CO2 saturation does not reflect the amount of carbon dioxide retention in the blood. I think that can only be detected by blood work.

I realize this has nothing to do about your legal position in this matter. I am not an authority on those matters. But hopefully it may help you, if not others, better understand how the pulmonary system works, even if from an elementary point of view.
Good Luck

[ellencee]

dadrummer
Typos from you? I don't believe it!
CO2 is carbon dioxide.
02 is oxygen.
Of course those numbers should be subscript level, but if there's a way to do that on here, I haven't found it; then, I didn't look, either.

Yep, each time you increased the O2 delivery rate, you increased the level of CO2 in your wife's body and were effectively suffocating her.

The whole scenario isn't as simple as I've explained, but the entire dynamics aren't important for answering either of the posted questions.

I happen to be assisting in the care of a terminally ill person and he has an oxygen concentrator. I checked his papers from the DME today, and they only come once a month to check the concentrator and bring new supplies (tubing and cannulas). During my grandmother's care, they didn't come but once every three months.

DME regulations are different in each area, different as regards pay source; ie: if Medicare is paying for the oxygen concentrator then a skill is being performed by either an RN or other licensed professional and the interaction between provider and client will be more frequent than for a person who is not receiving skilled care and is not receiving Medicare benefits for the concentrator. Private pay would be the lowest interaction between DME provider and client.

dadrummer's wife's health care is definitely skilled and her oxygen concentrator's capacity reflects the same, as does the frequency of DME interactions. (to identify those initials, DME=durable medical equipment)

ec**************.no typo's, just mistakes**************.sorry

One more thought along the payment arrangements......

My wife has private insurance and had 2 seperate suppliers for her needs, pancreatitis and COPD. Because we changed to a single supplier/provider they have agreed to accept what her insurer pays as payment in full. This is something that was negotiated.
Prior to the negotiations one supplier furnished supplies for tube feedings (pancreatitis) with us paying the co-payment. The same situation applied to the home/portable oxygen supplier. We paid the co-payment.

After discussing this with both providers one of them agreed to accept what the insurer paid as payment in full, eliminating all of our co-payments, if we agreed to allow them to supply all of her needs. The oxygen supplies and the feeding supplies. Thus far it has worked out extremely well.

Again I realize I have strayed from the issue posted but perhaps this info may be helpful to someone, somewhere.