‘Dire picture’: Dennis Prager sues hospitals for ‘complications’ following spinal injury
Popular talk-show host Dennis Prager, founder of Prager U online programs, has sued Cedars Sinai Medical Center and other health-care providers for failing to meet the “standard of care” for his spinal injury, resulting in complications including serious bed sores.
The complaint has been described by Courthousenews, which said the lawsuit paints a “dire picture.”
“Because of the critical errors and negligence falling below the standard of care, Prager has been unable to return to the Dennis Prager Show,” the complaint charges. “He has been unable to return to work, he has been unable to get off of the ventilator for long enough to have even one three-hour conversation, and his ability to communicate and work in general has been grossly hindered.”
The case charges hospitals in his case “failed to implement basic, mandatory measures” — namely, routinely turning Prager, causing him to develop “pressure ulcers,” the report explains.
Those bed sores are caused by constant pressure on parts of the skin, and can be severe enough to threaten a patient’s life.
Prager alleges once the hospital staff noticed the bed sores it already was a month after his accident and they were advanced, “reflecting extremely delayed recognition and prolonged unrelieved pressure.”
They required multiple surgeries and precluded his eligibility for “treatment at the overwhelming majority of rehabilitation and post-acute facilities nationwide,” the complaint alleges.
That means he had to go through “extended medical management” rather than an intensive recovery phase, the report explains.
Prager is a best-selling author and has hosted a radio talk show for decades.
The report said he was stepping out of his shower in late 2024 when he slipped and fell, hitting his head on the side of a bathtub and suffering a spinal cord injury.
The report noted, “Earlier this year, Prager expressed a degree of gratitude about his condition, telling the Christian Broadcasting Network: ‘A number of doctors, independently of one another, have described the fact that I am talking as ‘a miracle.’ And these are not religious people. I am cognizant of how lucky I am to be able to speak.'”
Other defendants include Barlow Respiratory Hospital and Rancho Los Amigos Rehabilitation Center.