Nursing Facility CEO Resigns After Woman in Vegetative State Gives Birth

The CEO of the Arizona nursing facility where a woman recently gave birth, despite being in a vegetative state for over a decade, has resigned.

The company Hacienda HealthCare told the New York Times that the resignation of executive Bill Timmons was approved by the entire board of directors. A vice president for the board said in a statement that they would “accept nothing less than a full accounting of this absolutely horrifying situation, an unprecedented case that has devastated everyone involved, from the victim and her family to Hacienda staff at every level of our organization.”

But the problems pervading the facility won’t be solved by firing a single executive. Given that the woman was in a vegetative state from a near-drowning incident and thus incapable of communicating consent or that she was pregnant, the pregnancy was clearly the result of sexual assault. Not only are there questions about how the woman was impregnated, but how nobody on staff was aware of the pregnancy up until the moment the patient started to go into labor and began moaning. The woman reportedly delivered a healthy baby.

The NYT reports that Arizona Department of Health Services says it will conduct an inspection of the nursing facility and detectives in Phoenix have already opened a sexual assault investigation. Arizona Department of Health Services found that in 2013 a male employee at the facility was making inappropriate sexual comments about patients bodies and was subsequently fired, and in 2017 the facility was reported for not offering privacy for patients while showering.