Upstate quadriplegic waiting for RN services 9 years due to dispute with state
COLUMBIA — Brook Waddle was 17, a cheerleader, homecoming queen and honor student at Landrum High School when a tragic accident turned her promising future into a nightmare in 2005.
Yet the crash that left her a quadriplegic and the two years she spent in hospitals did not prepare her for a battle with state agencies to get the care her doctors ordered.
For nearly a decade, her lawyer has taken her case before hearing officers and judges in an attempt to ensure Waddle receives the services her doctors say she needs.
But officials with the state Department of Disabilities and Special Needs, which coordinates services for those with spinal cord injuries, and the state Department of Health and Human Services, which approves Medicaid expenditures, have repeatedly refused or failed to approve the nursing care originally ordered by her doctors to allow Waddle to survive in her mother’s home, according to records in the case.
Read more: http://www.greenvilleonline.com/story/news/2016/11/19/upstate-quadriplegic-waiting-rn-services-9-years-due-dispute-state/93979176/