County to Pay Baby’s Family in Neglect Case

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors has agreed to pay more than $1 million for brain damage sustained by a premature infant after a county nurse accidentally injected the child with more than 70 times the prescribed amount of a nutritional supplement.

Arturo de la Torre, who is now 2, suffers from cerebral palsy as a result of the overdose at Olive View Medical Center/UCLA in Sylmar. Medical officials agree that it is unlikely that De La Torre will ever be able to support himself financially as an adult.

Supervisor Mike Antonovich has criticized Olive View for not taking tougher disciplinary action against the nurse. The nurse recently resigned from Olive View after making a similar mistake with another patient, county officials said.

They refused to identify the nurse and declined to elaborate on the incident that led to the nurse’s resignation.

The child’s guardian, Angela Soto, sued the county for $2.5 million after the 1994 incident, but agreed to the $1.175 million settlement, which does not include the cost of lifetime care for the child.

It was the second time the county has paid for malpractice by Olive View personnel treating De La Torre. In April 1995, the county agreed to pay the family $98,500 when the then 6-month-old required resuscitation after he was found in a “distressed state under a blanket in his hospital crib at Olive View,” according to a county report.

For several years, the county has attempted to clarify regulations and toughen punishment regarding the performance of its doctors and nurses.

A policy formulated by Health Director Mark Finucane this year was met with stiff resistance by physicians, who complained that they were already regulated by the state of California and professional organizations.

The De La Torre child was born premature and weighed only 1 lb. 2 oz. in October 1994. He was placed in Olive View’s neonatal intensive care unit, and fed intravenously with a nutritional supplement called Intralipid to increase his weight.

A month later, a physician ordered that 0.5 cc of Intralipid be given the child via an intravenous infusion line over a one-hour period.

A nurse later noticed that the line had been clamped, and in an attempt to catch up to the prescribed dosage, she increased the infusion rate to 50.5 cc.

But the nurse forgot to reduce the rate back to the originally ordered 0.5 cc, and De La Torre was administered 72 times more Intralipid than called for.

The overdose caused the child to suffer brain, liver and lung damage.