A Power Outage Cut Her Oxygen: $5.5 Million for a Palos Heights Nursing Home Death

Bettye Patterson was 80 years old when she entered Providence Palos Heights in June 2016. She lived with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and her doctors had determined that she needed supplemental oxygen 24 hours a day, seven days a week, delivered through a nasal cannula. The facility, run by Providence Operations, was the place her family trusted to keep that oxygen flowing.

On October 16, 2016, a power outage hit her room. The machine that fed her oxygen stopped. Two of her daughters were visiting and discovered the problem, and they alerted a nurse, but the facility was understaffed and its workers were not trained to respond. No one was able to restore her oxygen in time. Patterson spent roughly 20 minutes struggling to breathe before she died.

Her estate sued Providence Operations, the company that ran the home (also known as the Rest Haven Illiana Christian Convalescent Home). The suit alleged that the facility failed to protect Patterson from neglect and failed to provide properly supervised nursing care. The home has since closed.

Steve Malman, founder of Malman Law, handled the case for the family. Before it reached the jury, the defendant admitted liability and conceded that its negligence had caused Patterson's death, so the trial centered on the harm she and her family suffered rather than on fault. The evidence described her final minutes as agonizing, with testimony that the experience of losing oxygen that way would feel physiologically close to drowning. "She shouldn't have passed the way she did," her daughter Kim Triplett said.

In September 2023, the jury returned $5.5 million for the Estate of Bettye Patterson. The award covered her pain and suffering along with the family's grief, sorrow, mental suffering, and loss of society. Malman's firm described the result as the largest nursing home verdict in Illinois history.

Malman tied the case to a broader staffing problem, noting that a large share of the country's nursing homes do not meet minimum staffing guidelines. The Chicago Tribune reported that the figure was subject to change through post-trial requests. The available coverage records no reduction or remittitur of the $5.5 million award.