A Washington State hospital patient died after staff mistakenly consulted the wrong family about removing life support, prompting multiple lawsuits filed on January 14, 2025, against healthcare providers and officials.
David Wells, 69, was rushed to PeaceHealth Southwest Medical Center in Vancouver, Washington in August 2021 after choking on a piece of steak during dinner. He was unconscious and not breathing when admitted. However, according to legal documents, hospital staff wrongly identified him as his roommate, Mike Beehler, 60, entering Beehler’s information into their system instead of Wells’ facts.
When making the critical decision about life support, hospital staff contacted Beehler’s sister, Debbie Danielson, rather than Wells’ family. “They said, ‘He’s basically brain dead,'” Danielson told KGW. “‘Do you want us to keep him on life support, or do you want to pull the plug?'”
Danielson and her husband, Gary, made what they believed was a decision about her brother’s care. “We made life-ending decisions for a person we don’t even know,” Gary Danielson said. The error came to light when Beehler called his sister a week later, on August 14, 2021, to ask why his cell phone service had been deactivated. “I said, ‘You can’t be alive. You’re dead!'” Danielson recalled telling her brother.
The hospital had reported Beehler’s supposed death to the Clark County Medical Examiner’s Office on August 9, 2021, and a death notice was published in the local newspaper announcing Beehler’s passing. Wells’ body was sent to All County Cremation & Burial funeral home, which then contacted Beehler’s relatives about final arrangements.
Both Beehler and Danielson reported the mix-up to the police. The Clark County Medical Examiner’s Office later confirmed Wells’ identity as the deceased patient and contacted his son, Shawn Wells. “They basically told me there was a medical emergency regarding my father. He had been pronounced dead,” Shawn Wells told KGW. A new death notice was subsequently published: “David C. Wells, 69, Vancouver, died Aug. 9, 2021.”
“I’m at a loss for words how badly they handled this,” Shawn Wells told the media. “I’ll never be able to get that decision back.” Wells would not learn that strangers had determined his father’s fate until two years later when local news reporters contacted him.
A subsequent investigation by the Washington Department of Health uncovered multiple violations at the hospital, including failure to develop proper procedures to verify patient identification. The error reportedly began with the initial 911 call and persisted through each stage of care, including the funeral home.
A PeaceHealth spokesperson told The New York Post the hospital system, which operates multiple hospitals in the Pacific Northwest, “has worked diligently to strengthen our patient identification processes, which has included continued collaboration with multiple community agencies involved in healthcare, including EMS.” The spokesperson declined to offer more details due to ongoing litigation.
As of January 2025, Shawn Wells, Beehler, and Danielson have filed two separate lawsuits. The first targets PeaceHealth Southwest Medical Center for negligence and causing severe emotional distress “as a direct result of (PeaceHealth’s) extreme and outrageous conduct,” according to the complaint. The second lawsuit names the American Medical Response ambulance service for misidentifying the patient, All County Cremation & Burial Funeral Home, and the Clark County Medical Examiner’s Office for failing to disclose the error. Both lawsuits seek unspecified damages.