The estate of a Westmoreland County woman is suing two Butler County nursing homes for negligence in the woman’s death last year.

The administrator of the estate of Barbara Sayers filed a professional negligence suit last week in Common Pleas Court against Assisted Living at Rosebrook in Sarver and Concordia Lutheran Health and Human Care of Cabot seeking unspecified damages and a jury trial. Two medical practices, a doctor and several nurses affiliated with Concordia also were named as defendants.

Sayers had dementia and osteoarthritis, needed a wheelchair for mobility and had a history of falling when she was admitted to Rosebrook in February 2019, according to the suit.

On May 8, 2022, she was unsupervised in her wheelchair when she fell down an unprotected stairwell in Rosebrook and suffered a fracture of her left femur, which contained an orthopedic implant, and was complicated by joint bleeding and bruising, according to the suit.

After her discharge from a Pittsburgh hospital on May 12, Sayers was admitted to Concordia where she then developed a tailbone pressure injury, which increased in size and severity during her time there, according to the suit.

She was admitted to Butler Memorial Hospital on Aug. 30 and found to have inflammation at her tailbone with significant cell death and a high white blood cell count, according to the suit.

Intravenous antibiotics were administered and surgical debridement was performed to remove infected tissue and her tailbone, and she was given a feeding tube, according to the suit.

Sayers was returned to Concordia with the feeding tube and intravenous antibiotics on Sept. 10, according to the suit, but her condition continued to decline.

On Sept. 30, she was returned to the hospital for metabolic derangement and a high white blood cell count, and she was found to have significant pain, pneumonia, deep venous thrombosis in the bilateral upper extremities and multiple organ dysfunction, according to the suit.

She died Oct. 4 after being discharged to hospice care that day. Her immediate cause of death, according to the lawsuit, was bacterial pneumonia with osteomyelitis of the tailbone as a contributing factor.

The suit includes wrongful death claims and survival actions against Rosebrook and Concordia, which could not be reached for comment Monday.

The claims allege Rosebrook didn’t accurately assess Sayer’s fall risk level and her need for supervision and monitoring and failed to ensure she didn’t enter the stairwell, according to the suit.

Concordia failed to properly assess and treat her skin conditions and/or pressure injury, didn’t seek wound care evaluation and treatment in a timely manner and failed to prevent infection and osteomyelitis, according to the suit.