Connecticut woman, 21, dies hours after seeking care for a broken ankle. Parents say cuts left the hospital 'running on fumes'

An investigation by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) later found that the hospital had failed to properly record a doctor’s instructions over the phone, creating a risk that Dale would be given overlapping doses of narcotic pain medications.

The doctor later acknowledged that he should have clearly instructed staff to stop giving Dale morphine before starting Dilaudid, another powerful painkiller, per the CMS report.

Dale was declared brain dead and died on April 13, 2025.

“It’s incredibly difficult to wrap your head around how this can happen in a hospital that’s supposed to be a house of healing,” Martin told the news outlet. “There’s no explanation for how this could occur.”

A hospital in financial trouble

Dale’s family has since filed a lawsuit against Waterbury Hospital, the doctor and nurse involved in her care, the Connecticut Spine and Disc Institute and Prospect Medical Holdings, the hospital’s former owner. The lawsuit alleges that failures in her treatment and monitoring contributed to her death.

The family had no idea that the hospital was facing financial troubles and investigations. Dale had been taken to the nearest hospital for treatment. Her father told the Hartford Courant that conditions were so bad that nurses were allegedly buying food for patients out of their own pockets because the hospital lacked resources.

Waterbury Hospital had been struggling for years under Prospect Medical Holdings, a California-based, private equity-backed company accused of putting profits ahead of patient care. Prospect filed for bankruptcy in January 2025.

That same month, a bipartisan Senate investigation found that Prospect had paid $645 million to investors during its former private equity owner’s majority ownership, even as several of its hospitals faced staffing shortages and worsening conditions.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, who led the investigation, said documents showed that Prospect and its former private equity owner, Leonard Green & Partners, spent board meetings discussing ways to boost profits and cut costs, with little attention paid to the quality of patient care.

“Private equity investors have pocketed millions while driving hospitals into the ground and then selling them off, leaving towns and communities to pick up the pieces,” Whitehouse said.

Putting patient care at risk

Private equity firms buy businesses, often using borrowed money, with the goal of making them more profitable before selling them. In healthcare, that can mean raising prices or cutting costs, including reducing staff, which can affect patient care.

For Dale’s family, the question is whether those financial decisions contributed to her death.

“We will obviously learn more about the extent to which Prospect’s mismanagement of Waterbury Hospital contributed to the specific circumstances on the night that Dale died,” Christopher Mattei, the family’s lawyer at Koskoff, Koskoff & Bieder, told the Hartford Courant.

Mattei alleges that Prospect cut back on staffing, training and other resources. Ed Gadomski, a union organizer representing Waterbury Hospital’s nurses and technicians, also told the Courant that the hospital was severely understaffed, leaving nurses caring for too many patients without enough medical supplies.