Updated Last on 8/21/2027
On Friday, August 14, four patients at Ascension Saint Thomas Midtown went in for routine, outpatient joint replacement surgeries. According to local reporting, hospital staff mistakenly administered potassium chloride, a drug that stops the heart and is used in lethal injections, instead of an anesthetic medication.
At least two patients were left paralyzed. Another remains in the ICU on a ventilator. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation is now looking into how it happened, after the state's Health Facilities Commission flagged the incident.
As a Nashville firm that handles medical malpractice and prescription error cases, we wanted to walk through what's been reported so far and what a case like this typically looks like under Tennessee law.
What the Hospital Has Said So Far
Ascension Saint Thomas has confirmed that four patients were "impacted" by what it calls an "event," and its CEO issued a public apology days after the incident.
The hospital says it self-reported to state regulators, identified the cause, and put new safety protocols in place. It hasn't said publicly what the cause was. That combination, serious harm alongside very little disclosed detail, is common in the early days of a hospital error, and it's part of why the public often knows very little about what went wrong while the hospital says the matter has been handled.
When a Bad Outcome Becomes Medical Malpractice
Not every complication after surgery is malpractice. A claim requires showing that a provider owed a patient a certain standard of care, failed to meet it, and that the failure caused real harm.
The standard of care in a case like this isn't abstract. Hospital pharmacies are expected to have safeguards for exactly this kind of mistake: distinct packaging and storage for medications that carry serious risk if mishandled, barcode scanning at the bedside, and a second set of eyes before a medication reaches a patient. When those systems exist and get bypassed anyway, that's the kind of fact pattern that turns a tragic outcome into a legal claim rather than an unavoidable risk of surgery.
An Internal Investigation Isn't the Same as Accountability
The hospital's internal review and the TBI's investigation serve different purposes than a civil claim. Regulatory investigations look at whether the facility violated licensing or safety rules and whether corrective action is warranted going forward.
They don't compensate the patients who were harmed, and they don't require the hospital to hand over the internal records, dispensing logs, or communications that explain exactly how the mix-up happened. That level of detail typically only comes out through the discovery process in a civil case.
Our Experience With Cases Like This
We've spent decades handling medical malpractice cases across Tennessee, including cases involving preventable medication and treatment errors that left patients with permanent injuries:
- $22.2 million for a woman left paraplegic after hospital staff inserted an epidural catheter despite her being on blood thinners
- $15.2 million for a young man left with catastrophic brain injury after a tracheostomy tube was removed improperly during rehab
- $6.5 million for a woman who suffered a brain injury after a surgical complication went unrecognized
If you have questions about what happened at Ascension Saint Thomas, or you're trying to understand what a hospital medication error case looks like under Tennessee law, our team is glad to talk it through. Call (615) 933-2893 or contact us online for a free, confidential consultation.