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Did Medical Bills Lead to Peoria Nurse's Firing?

Although the two women had worked together for almost four years without a recorded complaint, the single phone conversation was sufficient cause for firing Dewitt, the hospital’s attorney said. “Mary Jane Davis lost confidence in [Dewitt’s] ability to carry out orders,” Davis said.

At their home in Pekin, Tony Dewitt—a patient man who endured his lengthy illness without complaint, according to his wife—was distraught over the hospital’s action.

Dewitt elected to continue the family’s health insurance for 18 months and to pay the monthly premium of more than $900 herself. Almost exactly a year later, her husband died, having planned well in advance an unusual funeral complete with a circus tent, clowns, animal balloons and a Dixieland band.

Today, Dewitt consults for the Institute of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, teaches nursing at Illinois Central College and is a graduate assistant at St. Francis Medical Center College of Nursing in Peoria. Her daughter and son-in-law work at Proctor Hospital, as do several friends, but Dewitt still hasn’t reconciled herself to what happened.

“To see a health-care institution act as they did, while my husband was dying, while I was trying to support him, that’s something I just can’t accept,” she said.

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