Posted on 05/20/2007 10:52:28 AM PDT by John Jorsett
In the emergency room at Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital, Edith Isabel Rodriguez was seen as a complainer.
"Thanks a lot, officers," an emergency room nurse told Los Angeles County police who brought in Rodriguez early May 9 after finding her in front of the Willowbrook hospital yelling for help. "This is her third time here."
The 43-year-old mother of three had been released from the emergency room hours earlier, her third visit in three days for abdominal pain. She'd been given prescription medication and a doctor's appointment.
Turning to Rodriguez, the nurse said, "You have already been seen, and there is nothing we can do," according to a report by the county office of public safety, which provides security at the hospital.
Parked in the emergency room lobby in a wheelchair after police left, she fell to the floor. She lay on the linoleum, writhing in pain, for 45 minutes, as staffers worked at their desks and numerous patients looked on.
Aside from one patient who briefly checked on her condition, no one helped her. A janitor cleaned the floor around her as if she were a piece of furniture. A closed-circuit camera captured everyone's apparent indifference.
Arriving to find Rodriguez on the floor, her boyfriend unsuccessfully tried to enlist help from the medical staff and county police — even a 911 dispatcher, who balked at sending rescuers to a hospital.
Alerted to the "disturbance" in the lobby, police stepped in — by running Rodriguez's record. They found an outstanding warrant and prepared to take her to jail. She died before she could be put into a squad car.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
I find this chilling and unconscionable. Doctors treat many people we disapprove of, it’s our job. Whether the warrant is for armed robbery or an unpaid traffic ticket, deciding who “deserves” to be treated and who does not is a slippery concept.
Where would you draw the line for the warrant’s reason? How would you determine your “no treatment” list? How would you ensure that the warrant was justified so that someone who might later be found “not guilty” doesn’t die from lack of care in the meantime?
And that's another category of people that should be included in the protocol I suggested above. People who are perfectly happy to let someone who is really having a heart attack die due to a delay in care, so THEY can get to the front of the line and get treatment for their sort throat. They should be arrested, given due process in court, and then put on a permanent nationwide "no treatment" list. If a private charity wants to provide them with medical care, fine. But the taxpayers and private insurance premium-payers shouldn't be forced to.
Much as I favor a laissez-faire approach to most things economic, I’m not prepared to extend it to letting people die if they can’t pay for treatment.
Janssen said he was concerned that the incident would divert attention from preparing the hospital for a crucial review in six weeks that is to determine whether it can regain federal funding.
If the hospital fails, it could be forced to close.
There was a great article about the crap hole of a hospital last year explaining why they lost their funding.
If memory serves me correct the hospital administrator was taking down something like a $350,000 a year
I have a nephew who is half Mexican, father was a legal citizen and he is a legal citizen too. I guess in these people’s minds they are trash worthy of a torturess death too.
There is no difference between these remarks and the hateful vomit spewed at DU.
I am also gathering more data. I don’t trust the LA Times. There are going to be details that flesh this out. Until then, it appears one way, but there surely might be more.
As I said previously, I don’t have any Hispanic relatives or ancestors. I don’t support any foreigners being here illegally and I think the new law announced last week is a travesty. I would love to see the illegals deported. However, IN NO CIRCUMSTANCES SHOULD A HOSPITAL BE PERMITTED TO REFUSE EMERGENCY TREATMENT TO ANYONE.
IMHO, there was insufficient info in the article to draw conclusions one way or another, and probably won’t be until after liabilities are settled.
IMHO, one weakness in healthcare is the institutionalization of JCAHO standards en lieu of professional oversight in emergency rooms and healthcare in general. I wouldn’t be surprised if the hospital staff followed JCAHO standards and checklists, thereby justifying their position to release the patient and pulling up a history of disrespecting HC practitioners, thereby justifying their ignorance of her true condition.
That’s horrible, but what pisses me off is that honest, responsible people who really need help urgently, often don’t get it because the emergency rooms and hospital wards are overwhelmed with scammers and criminals and people who have self-inflicted their ailments. Yes, it’s possible that this woman wasn’t “garbage”, but she did have an arrest warrant out for her. Probably no angel. And we have no information about how many other patients with urgent life-threatening conditions the ER staff was dealing with while they left her on the floor.
Thanks. There could be various causes for the perforated bowel, and some patients just don’t do what the textbooks say - no fever, normal white blood cell count, or no free air on Xray, etc.
I’d bet she was seen by an ER doc on earlier visits; the triage nurse could delay the care, but not send her home without exam. (Unless things are much worse at that hospital than even the reports say.) So I’d be very curious to see the initial work up. It’s been known for years that a patient returning to the ER unexpectedly can mean an initially missed diagnosis. Three times would definitely make most docs look carefully. I agree, if she was diagnosed and treated promptly, she might be alive today.
Unfortunately we live in a society of more elderly “Me-Generation” patients. Since each medical record is unique to each patient, the healthcare providers are allowed to also document the behavior of patients.
For example, if a patient insists they know more than the doctor, or if they demand services without payment, which they themselves declare they require, without professional concurrence, they also establish a historical trend that might be used the next time they visit any practitioner who pulls up their medical history.
It pays to be courteous to the healthcare practitioners and not invite negative comments on the patient HC record.
I agree.
It appears that this woman was not crying wolf, or she wouldn’t be dead.
My son was hospitalized several times for abdominal pains and told that it was food poisoning, combined with alcohol. They pumped his stomach and sent him home. He continued to have bouts of “food poisoning”, about 4 times a year. Then finally, at a time when he had no insurance, the pains returned and he went again to the emergency room. They tried to tell him that it was cirrhosis of the liver and that he should stop drinking. Then the blood work came back and the doctor freaked because he had such a bad gall bladder that it had caused pancreatatis which was so bad that he could have died. He didn’t want to talk about the fact that the hospital had admitted him for the same symptoms, two years before.
From the article:
According to preliminary coroner's findings, the cause was a perforated large bowel, which caused an infection. Experts say the condition can bring about death fairly suddenly.
I suspect a hospital ER waiting room would provide an outstanding population cross section to statistically monitor sociological perceptions within a community.
This is the hospital that had their accreditation pulled by JCAHO because they weren’t following standards, despite many warnings and chances to fix the problem. Since you’re familiar with JCAHO, you must know how unusual it is for them to take away accreditation.
However, I agree with you that lots of JCAHO ER standards are besides the point - they don’t lead to good care, often they just lead to a bureaucratic mess. The “pharmacist review” is one example.
This is true. Having an Hispanic surname is a problem now: New York City has tried to force 4th generation Americans with an Hispanic surname into “bilingual” classes. They had to sue to get their child out of the bilingual program, even though nobody in the family spoke Spanish.
I didn’t say that people with a life-threateneing condition should be turned away just for inability to pay. But the ones who are repeat scammers, career criminals, etc. should definitely go the back of the line, or be simply turned away, while other people get treated. And if they die while in line, well, better them than the people who are not repeat scammers, career criminals, etc. There is simply not a bottomless pit of money and resources to provide endless high tech medical treatment to people who are liars, criminals, and self-destructive. If somebody gets drunk, gets in a car, and crashes into a car driven by someone who isn’t drunk, putting both drivers in critical condition, I want the one who wasn’t drunk treated first and treated thoroughly. Let the one who got drunk and caused the situation wait, even if it means that he/she dies waiting.
I know abdominal pain is difficult to diagnose, but her condition should have sent up so many red flags to the ER staff. I work in the area of trauma so am not well versed on ER protocol when working up abdominal pain, but this all sounds so wrong. I can’t even begin to imagine our ER staff behaving this way and we have plenty of “frequent flyers”.
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