COLONIAL HEIGHTS, Va. — As the Colonial Heights Rehabilitation and Nursing Center deals with a criminal investigation concerning the death of a patient, the family of another former resident at the facility has now filed a wrongful death civil lawsuit against the nursing home, its ownership, and a doctor and a nurse practitioner at the facility.
The lawsuit alleges Geraldine Richardson sustained injury and/or death as a result of negligence.
"She was a 78-year-old lady who was placed in that rehab facility with dementia and difficulty walking," Joe Cravens, President of Cravens & Noll, and the lawyer representing Richardson's family said. "She was placed there to get care to help her re-learn to walk. During that time, she went from almost ambulatory to death by stage 4 ulcers and septic infection. It is a complete degradation of the skin tissue and the muscle tissue all the way to the bone."
Cravens shared a picture with CBS 6, with the permission of Richardson's family, of one of Richardson's ulcers.
The ulcer was described in the lawsuit as being 6 inches wide with blackened necrotic tissue and foul-smelling drainage. The image is extremely graphic, so we blurred it.
"When one sits in a dirty diaper too long, you develop necrosis, which is the death of the outside skin tissue. Once that necrosis begins, diapers have to be changed almost hourly because you're getting fecal matter into exposed skin," Cravens said.
The lawsuit alleges the facility knew that Richardson needed to receive position changes every two hours, but they provided little to no purposeful turning or repositioning.
Watch: Criminal charges against Virginia nursing home staffers to be upgraded
The suit also claims the nursing home failed to provide her with adequate nutrition, and that she was retained improperly despite knowledge that the needs presented by the pressure ulcers and other medical conditions were incapable of being met by the facility.
In the lawsuit, Innovative Healthcare Management is listed as the facility's owner, but a nurse investigator at the Virginia Attorney General's Office said in court Wednesday that the ownership is currently Medical Facilities of America (MFA).
"You believe if these facilities are taking in non-ambulatory patients, people that cannot get around on their own, that they should be able to provide that service, they should be able to turn these folks every two hours?" CBS 6 reporter Melissa Hipolit asked Cravens.
"There is no question," he replied.
In a separate criminal case, investigators allege a resident was left to lay in her own urine and feces, was not turned in her bed or changed, and developed wounds which ultimately led to her death.
Colonial Heights Rehabilitation and Nursing Center has a 1 out of 5 star rating, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
"You personally believe that a facility like Colonial Heights should be able to turn a person, provide them the food and the water, everything they need, change their diaper routinely, so that they do not develop a stage 4 bed sore?" Hipolit asked.
"Absolutely, because there are many facilities that do just that," Cravens replied. "This is not the issue of all nursing homes, this is the issue of poorly run, poor-quality nursing homes."
We asked the spokesperson for Colonial Heights Rehabilitation and Nursing Center, Mindie Barnett, for a response to the lawsuit.
She said the facility had "no comment pertaining to the legal matter due to the legal proceedings."
This is a developing story. Email the CBS 6 Newsroom if you have additional information to share.
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