Inset: Tamara Bircumshaw (Lindquist Mortuary). Background: The Utah nursing home where Tamara Bircumshaw’s family says she developed deadly bedsores due to “total neglect” (Google Maps).
A 66-year-old Walmart greeter from Utah died after suffering a work injury and developing iPhone-sized bedsores while she was rehabilitating at a nursing home, her family says in a lawsuit.
“Total neglect on their end is what ended up taking her,” the woman’s son alleges about the nursing facility.
“They’re way short-staffed,” said Kenny Bircumshaw, son of Tamara “Tammy” Bircumshaw, in an interview with local ABC affiliate KTVX. “At first she was really happy, cheery. Then, when she started declining, she was in pain and just miserable.”
Bircumshaw, a grandmother from Layton, died in July 2023 from health complications related to the bedsores she developed at Rocky Mountain Care in Clearfield, according to her family’s lawsuit, which was filed against the facility. She had suffered “a back injury from work” and ended up getting back surgery to try to fix it, Kenny Bircumshaw says.
“After getting the back fixed… it started to deteriorate on her hips, so she had to have her hips replaced,” he told KTVX.
The family’s lawyer, Barry Toone, recounts how it took just 11 days for Tammy Bircumshaw to start developing bedsores at Rocky Mountain Care after she was admitted in July 2022 following a hip surgery.
“She was expected to be there for a short period of time and then get the other hip done,” he said. “When she went back to the hospital to get the other hip done, they told her she couldn’t do it because of that pressure sore.”
Kenny Bircumshaw added, “The surgeon called us from the operating room saying that he couldn’t do the surgery because she had too big of a pressure sore.”
According to the family’s lawsuit, Tammy Bircumshaw tested positive for MRSA just one month after her surgery was cancelled.
“Ms. Bircumshaw did not begin receiving specialized wound care until Dec. 27, 2022, at which time she was diagnosed with a stage-4 pressure ulcer,” the lawsuit alleges, according to KTVX. “By that time, she had developed three bedsores.”
Toone says Tammy Bircumshaw had a pressure wound that was “11-by-10-by-4 centimeters, and she died of sepsis.” He told KTVX that the wound was the size of two iPhones side by side.
“She just laid there and was miserable… for her last day of life,” remembered Kenny Bircumshaw. “She told my son she loved him. That was the one and only thing that she said the whole entire night, and she passed away in the morning.”
The Bircumshaw family has accused Rocky Mountain Care of being “chronically understaffed,” which led to Tammy being neglected and not taken care of properly.
Attempts by Law&Crime to reach the facility for comment were unsuccessful Sunday. It declined to comment when reached by KTVX.
