Cincy-area man claims hospital literally worked his wife to death

Back in March, Beth Jasper, a nurse at Jewish Hospital in Cincinnati, died in a grisly crash while on her way home.  Now her husband, Jim, is suing the hospital's owner, saying that his wife's heavy workload was a contributing cause of her death.  The Reader's Digest version--Jim Jasper thinks his wife was literally worked to death.

Jim Jasper's wife, Beth, was killed on March 16 while driving home after a 12-hour shift.

The wrongful death lawsuit, filed last week, alleges that from 2011 to the time of her death, Beth Jasper's unit at the Jewish Hospital in Cincinnati was "regularly understaffed," causing some nurses, including Jasper, to work through breaks and pick up additional shifts.

Additionally, Jasper was routinely called into work while off duty because she was one of the few nurses qualified to work the unit's dialysis machines, according to the suit.

"It needs to change. These nurses cannot be treated this way," Jim Jasper told CNN affiliate WCPO, referring to the conditions he says led to his wife's death. "They can't continue to work these nurses and expect them to pick up the slack because they don't want to staff the hospitals."

Jasper's suit claims that Jewish Hospital's owner, Mercy Health Partners, did nothing to address a serious shortage of nurses even after Beth's supervisor alerted her bosses about it.  It claims that on the night of March 16, Beth's body simply gave out under the weight of so many long hours.  Her car veered off the road, jumped an embankment and slammed into a tree.  During what turned out to be her last shift, Beth reportedly told her coworkers she was "really stressed" and "hadn't eaten." That led her husband's lawyer, Eric Deters, to say that Mercy "clearly didn't take care of its own people, and it did so deliberately."

According to WKRC-TV in Cincinnati, the problem dates back to 2011, when Mercy bought Jewish Hospital.  Jasper's suit claims that after Mercy took over, it let several nurses go and significantly increased the workload of those it kept.  According to WLWT in Cincinnati, Beth actually moved to Jewish from another Mercy-owned hospital because nurse-to-patient ratios were at unsafe levels--only to get a repeat performance when Mercy bought Jewish.  Now Mercy stands to have to pay Jasper as much as what it would have had to pay to simply hire more nurses--and probably more.

A lot of people on the comments sections of these stories have wondered why Beth didn't find another job.  Well, what's she supposed to do while waiting for one to turn up?  Especially with two kids to feed.