Wrongful death suit headed to trial in Grundy County

A Grundy Center man who alleges that a local physician’s negligence resulted in his wife’s death will have his day in court next year after a judge filed an order for a civil trial last week.
           
Keith Wills, on behalf of his late wife Darla, is seeking a judgment against PA-C Michael Knutsen and Dr. William Durbin, M.D. of the Unitypoint Family Medicine Clinic in Grundy Center as well as Iowa Health System (IHS) and the Iowa Physicians Clinic Medical Foundation (IPCMF) “in amounts that will fully and fairly compensate them for their injuries, for interest allowed by law and the costs of this action.”
           
Attorney Marc Harding of Des Moines first filed the lawsuit in July of 2017, charging that Knutsen diagnosed Darla with mild acute respiratory distress secondary to heart failure and attributed a persistent cough to heart failure congestion on December 22, 2015. According to the filing, Knutsen “opined that it was not sufficiently significant to warrant her seeking treatment through the hospital’s emergency department,” failed to consult with Darla’s nephrologist or cardiologist, and released her before lab tests were completed despite a history of renal failure, dialysis, coronary artery disease, COPD, acute pulmonary edema and heart failure.
           
From there, Mr. and Mrs. Wills traveled to Cedar Rapids to visit her mother, and the lab tests revealed that Darla’s potassium levels were “critically elevated.” Then, the lawsuit notes, Unitypoint staff made multiple attempts to contact her, and she became unresponsive while her husband was driving her to Allen Hospital in Waterloo. It was later determined that her heart had stopped, and she went into a coma for three days before passing away on Christmas morning. 
 
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