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	shinga 2008-07-13 01:17 pm UTC (link)
	OH. MY. FUCKING. GOD. And oh goody, they fired people. That's it. They fired them. Fan-fucking-tastic. Considering ALL OF THEM tried to cover up the death with fake reports, obviously they were being instructed to hide it. Just firing the security guards and whoever was on duty will probably not magically fix this. That whole article makes me want to kill something. (Reply to this)(Thread)

inappropriate
2008-07-13 03:14 pm UTC (link)

Just found a sort of "follow-up" article as well.

Six hospital employees were fired in the days after she died, and the city agreed to reduce overcrowding and trim the time patients spend in the unit. Hospital administrators also promised to improve conditions in the unit, which had been deplored in a recent lawsuit.

The suit, which is still pending, claimed the long waits for care at King’s County could be cruel. Patients had limited access to linens, gowns or soap. The showers were filthy and there were few places to sleep.

One patient lucky enough to get a bed complained that someone stole her spot when she got up in the night to use the bathroom. Another patient said he was robbed of his wallet after falling asleep in a busy hallway.

A 54-year-old man only days removed from an open heart surgery said he had to curl up on the floor of a reception area, where he was kept awake by fighting between patients and security guards.

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	judyhazeleyes 2008-07-13 02:15 pm UTC (link)
	dsfhajklhflsadfsda DON'T MAKE ME GO GET SURGERY NEXT MONTH OH GOD HOSPITALS SCARE ME RIGHT NOW. (Reply to this)

altoidsaddict
2008-07-13 02:55 pm UTC (link)

It's not exclusive to that one hospital, either - when I was having my stroke, Swedish Hospital (Littleton, CO) triage nurses bumped me to the back. After the first hour of waiting, my husband told them I needed help RIGHT NOW or he was taking me to another hospital. The triage nurses snapped "Oh, you'll never get in anywhere, every hospital in the city is packed, you need to go back and wait." (Plenty of ambulatory and conscious patients were called to be seen before us while I drooled and slumped over in my chair.) They refused to call the hospital down the street where my doctor worked to even see about wait times for a stroke patient.

Less than fifteen minutes later we were down the street at Porter's empty ER with an IV and stroke meds in my neck. (Which is where they had to put the IV since my circulation was shut down that much.)

Swedish is supposed to be the #1 hospital in Colorado and has an attached brain injury/rehabilitation center. And they bumped a stroke patient to the back. This woman dying could just as easily have happened there, and I hate going to a hospital alone for just that reason.

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	altoidsaddict 2008-07-13 02:56 pm UTC (link)
	Er, that's Englewood, CO. You'd think I knew this 'cause I live down the street and all. (Reply to this)(Parent)

rekall
2008-07-13 04:18 pm UTC (link)

Sadly, stuff like that isn't just limited to the United States.

A few years ago my aunt broke her hand. When she gets to the ER, she figured it wouldn't take long since the only other people there were drunks who were hung over (mind you this was the middle of the afternoon so I don't know why they were drunk then other than it being the Canadian Thanksgiving).

She ended up waiting HOURS because the ER staff thought she had just sprained her wrist and that she was making a big deal over nothing (you'd think all the blood would have tipped them off). When she finally got an x-ray taken, the doctor flipped out, wondering why she wasn't taken care of sooner since it was the worst hand break that hospital had ever seen. She ended up having emergency surgery that night on it and her recovery time was twice as long as a normal hand/wrist/arm break.

I partly blame idiots going to the ER for unnecessary things (going because you're hung over or because of a twisted ankle is just wasting everyone's time). But really, the staff should be better educated on who needs help sooner than later.

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	sisterelwood 2008-07-13 02:57 pm UTC (link)
	And this is why once I pay of my law school loans I want to do pro bono work with groups advocating rights of the mentally ill. SNARL (Reply to this)

	rhrsoulmates 2008-07-13 03:46 pm UTC (link)
	Here's the video. It's an updated news clip so the part with the lady's collapse occurs about mid-way through. It's disturbing, especially knowing that she ends up dying but also the unbelievable amount of time that passes on the surveillance tape and NO ONE HELPS! Patients are sitting in the waiting area, a doctor checks in, they just do nothing for an hour! Fucking unreal. :( (Reply to this)

	sgtgeorgecarter 2008-07-13 04:41 pm UTC (link)
	Welcome to NY. All the hospitals are like this and thy are trying to close more to make the backlog worse. Healthcare my arse. (Reply to this)(Thread)

	kylenne 2008-07-13 06:28 pm UTC (link)
	Correction: every public hospital is like that. And Kings County is by far the worst in the city. Methodist in Brooklyn is a damn good hospital. As are most any that refuse to treat people with no insurance. [insert rant about the only candidates who advocated truly Universal Healthcare being out of the race here] (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	sgtgeorgecarter 2008-07-13 06:43 pm UTC (link)
	Ahh well as I'm among the uninsured I sadly only know from the public. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	kylenne 2008-07-13 08:00 pm UTC (link)
	Aww, being uninsured sucks ass. I was lucky and found a job with decent benefits but there was a long time when I had to practice the Chris Rock Robitussin method of healthcare. Yet any attempt to fix anything gets people freaking about ZOMG SOCIALISM!!111 Sucks. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	rennyn_alerothi 2008-07-13 08:57 pm UTC (link)
	I too am familiar with the Chris Rock method of healthcare. :( I think all of the people freaking out about ZOMG COMMUNISM need to go for one month without healthcare...ten hours in an emergency room of the local public hospital for something that their insured doctor would have had them in and out for with a prescription would learn 'em quick. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	aerobot 2008-07-14 07:17 am UTC (link)
	See, THIS is what I don't get. What the everloving hell does it have to do with freaking COMMUNISM? Do they even understand what communism is? Because last I checked, its not communism to pay for public schools or public roads or for the police service, right? How that any different for paying for public healthcare? (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	squeakytoy 2008-07-14 07:50 am UTC (link)
	If universal health care is communist, I don't want to be a capitalist! The Private Health Care Service: bringing new meaning to the phrase, "Your money, or your life!" (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	sgtgeorgecarter 2008-07-15 12:00 am UTC (link)
	And then everyone bitches about catastrophic methods cost when you know 20.00 in prevention and routine care would have averted it. Priorities are all fucked up. Way to go Pharma companies. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	agent_hyatt 2008-07-14 09:07 pm UTC (link)
	Shit. I just moved to upstate New York for school, and due to bureaucracy stuff I'm uninsured until fall. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	sgtgeorgecarter 2008-07-14 11:59 pm UTC (link)
	Don't get sick. (Reply to this)(Parent)

platedlizard
2008-07-13 05:44 pm UTC (link)

Not surprised. I worked with a guy that collapsed in the ER due to vertigo. The only reason why they put him in a room was because he had brought a friend along, and his friend started making a HUGE fuss when he fainted. Turned out Pat had a really nasty bug that had not only messed with his sense of balance, but had given him a super high fever.

Apparently the ER staff thought he was drunk. Not so much. This was on the East Coast somewhere, might have even been NYC.

Compare/contrast to the treatment my mom got at St. Vincent in Beaverton, Oregon after she fell while wearing a foot cast and experienced numbness and tingling from the fall. She was in the empty waiting room for about as long as it took to fill out a form, got put in an exam room and saw a nurse immediately, and the doctor about five minutes later. (turned out she had a pinched nerve) St. Vincents has always treated my parents well.

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kylenne
2008-07-13 06:22 pm UTC (link)

I was utterly unsurprised when I first heard about that story. I don't think anyone who hasn't lived in Brooklyn really understands what an absolute shithole Kings County Hospital is. It might well be the worst hospital in the country (running neck and neck with that hospital in LA that turns patients out onto Skid Row). The ER in particular is like a black hole of despair. I've had the misfortune of having to use it or accompany someone there a few times. The last was a few years ago when I had no insurance and had a mystery infection that left me perfectly fine during the day but having 102 degree fevers at night. I damn near died in the waiting room but luckily my BF at the time and my mother (an RN) raised enough hell that I saw someone immediately. And then I was misdiagnosed because the ER doctor was just trying to get me out of there...it was like some kind of fucked up conveyor belt system they had going. The good hospitals in Brooklyn don't accept people with no insurance, which is how all the poor and downtrodden end up in Kings County.

It's no accident that Kings County happens to be in a working class black & West Indian area of Brooklyn that the hipster douchebags haven't discovered yet. I don't think I've ever seen a white face in that hospital that didn't work there. If that hospital serviced Park Slope or Williamsburg you can be damn sure the city would clean it up and do something about it. But the system could care less when it's black and brown folks dropping dead from lack of care (see also: Katrina).

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also_not_a_pipe
2008-07-13 07:31 pm UTC (link)

Didn't this just happen in the last couple of years in Los Angeles too?

See, this is why I insist that the modern American for-profit health care system is evil. I don't use the word often, because it's a big, serious word. But the system that says "Poor people in the public hospitals? Fuck them, they might not even have insurance. Let them wait hours to be seen and get lesser quality care than at the private hospitals (not saying its even the public hospitals fault always; most of them do they best they can with what they get). They deserve it for not being able to go to private hospitals. Good health is for people with money and good health plans" is at very best poisoned and poisonous.

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	atalantapendrag 2008-07-13 09:19 pm UTC (link)
	Stories like this are why it took over six months of gallbladder attacks before I went to the ER. Luckily it didn't take too long for me to be seen, but I saw something sad when I was there, an apparently homeless woman being kicked out since it was dawn. The security guards knew her by name. From what I could tell, it wasn't the first time she'd spent the night there. (Reply to this)

	smashingstars 2008-07-13 09:56 pm UTC (link)
	According to this article, she died from blood clots which may have been caused by her sitting inactive in the ER for 24 hours: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25645621/ Wow, I can't believe this actually got WORSE. (Reply to this)

luthe
2008-07-13 11:04 pm UTC (link)

See, I would be more pissed if I didn't read ER blogs on a regular basis. The doctors and nurses that work in the ER are, for the most part, caring and dedicated people who are doing the best they can in the face of a shitty system. They have to deal with overflowing waiting rooms, admitted patients boarding in the ER because of a lack of beds on the floors, violent mental patients that are almost impossible to transfer to overcrowded state hospitals, people coming into the ER for things like stubbed toes, the ER being used for primary care, elderly patients on life support whose families demand hours of CPR for them, homeless people coming in for a bed and a hot meal, and, yeah, actual emergencies.

This is a really bad case of a hospital fuck-up, but really, the staff do the best they can.

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nostariel
2008-07-14 08:58 am UTC (link)

Oh, boo-fucking-hoo. Yes, the American health care system is a piece of shit, but that in no way excuses this kind of behavior from hospital staff.

What about this, from one of the articles linked:

A 54-year-old man only days removed from an open heart surgery said he had to curl up on the floor of a reception area, where he was kept awake by fighting between patients and security guards.

What about the fact that sitting in that chair for 24 hours may have directly contributed to the blood clots that killed her?

A "fuck-up"? Really? The staff blatantly lied in an attempt to cover their own asses:

One notation said that at 6 a.m., she was "awake, up and about" and had just used the restroom. Another said that at 6:20 a.m., she was sitting quietly in the waiting room, and had a normal blood pressure. During both of those times, Green was either in her death throes or already dead.

There was already a lawsuit pending against King’s County Hospital Center because the way patients are treated in that hospital is fucking horrific.

Try watching that video again.

I'll feel bad for the staff when they're the ones dying on the goddamn floor while everyone around them acts like their suffering is just too much of an inconvenience to be bothered with. Jesus Christ.

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	kalindi 2008-07-15 11:35 pm UTC (link)
	I didn't know that included kicking people to see if they were conscious, or looking at a fallen woman and not checking to see if she was alright. There is no excuse for the behavior from the staff, nor the way they tried to cover up her death for their own ends. At all. (Reply to this)(Parent)

inappropriate
2008-07-17 01:17 am UTC (link)

But, in this case, it's pretty obvious this was NOT the best they could do. They tried to cover it up since their treatment of this patient would be seen as unacceptable.

As the comment above me says, they ignored an unconcious patient who lied on their floor for AN HOUR at least. Then they simply nudged her with their FOOT to wake her up?

Yeah, if that's the best they could do, I'd say we're all in deep trouble.

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	ninwhore 2008-07-14 01:29 am UTC (link)
	I'm just glad that at our local hospital, they know my dad by name and sight. He works for the company that fixes some of their equipment. It's funny going in with him for medical stuff because people will stop him in the halls and ask how he's doing/if he's working. Means that they're all super nice. 8D (Reply to this)

made_by_kali
2008-07-14 03:20 am UTC (link)

Angry thoughts on ~~YAOI~~ hospitals

I sat vomiting in the Mount Nitany Medical Center ER for so long that by the time they got me to a room I sucked down 1 liter of saline via IV in about thirty minutes plus nearly another liter over the course of the next few hours. To give you an idea of how bad my fluid loss was, I'm only 5'1" 110lbs in the first place.

Did I mention I didn't even SEE a nurse or doctor (disregarding triage) until about 3 hours after I'd been sitting in the room. My IV was started by a paramedic.

Oh, and the reason that I was projectile vomiting everywhere was because I had been in the day before with suspected Meningitis. Some numbnut hadn't read my medical background and gave me suppositories I was allergic to and then gave me prescriptions for a codeine based cough syrup and an anti-biotic that I can't remember at the moment, both of which I have a history of having extreme reactions to. If I had been coherent at all I would have brought it up, but I was lucky I knew who I was and where I was.

Oh, and then they fudged the billing to my insurance and I've been in collections for a $3,000 bill that insurance should have covered and that I already paid in full. I'm pretty sure they finally billed my insurance correctly too and are not trying to extra the payment for something they've already been paid twice for.

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dottiness
2008-07-14 12:07 pm UTC (link)

More ANGRY THOUGHTS ON HOSPITALS:

I suffered my first asthma attack at 8. At the time neither I nor my family had any idea what it was. My mother rushed me to the emergency family care center, where they advised her to rush me to the hospital, which she did.

We waited for somewhere near 4 hours because the staff couldn't be bothered to leave their Christmas party for a child who was having trouble breathing.

Following that, they proceeded to scold my mother about not getting me there faster and said that if she had, a shot of adrenalin would have cleared me right up and I probably wouldn't have developed asthma. But because she took too long getting me to treatment, it was her fault that I had to stay in the hospital over Christmas.

Best healthcare system in the world, my ass.

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hallidae
2008-07-14 04:51 pm UTC (link)

Still more angry thoughts on hospitals.

One year, while we were out practicing marching band in the godawful August heat, I collapsed with pains in my right side and violent vomiting. The band instructor freaked and called 911 and my parents, and I was taken to the hospital. They initially believed that I had something wrong with my appendix, and decided to run a CT scan. Curled up in agony, I waited two hours for that, one of which was after I'd already choked down the nasty chalk-tasting stuff. They did the scan and, because it had taken so many tries to get the IV inserted (I have rolling veins and a needle phobia, but I behaved enough to not do anything worse than hyperventilating), decided to tape the needle to my wrist and just disconnect the hose, in case they needed more tests. I was sent back to the gurney, now with a plastic needle poking out of my wrist and still in intense pain. By now, my parents had arrived (they'd been told the wrong hospital), and I filled them in as pest as I could. They both decided to stick around for moral support, and pulled up chairs beside my gurney.

Three hours and multiple ignored attempts to get a nurse's attention later, I finally couldn't take it anymore, and Dad carried me to the nurse's station, where I half-screamed, half-begged for them to do something for the pain, or at least take the needle out.

"Oh, honey, sorry about that. We'd forgotten all about you."

Thanks. Thanks a lot.

Thankfully, it later turned out the violent pain was caused by an ovarian cyst, not my appendix, but they didn't freaking know that when they "forgot" about me. Jesus.

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bobafeis
2008-07-17 04:40 am UTC (link)

Since I've got quite a few ER visits under my belt, my thoughts on the ER: if you can get the paramedics to take you in an ambulance, do it. Without insurance, it is ungodly expensive, but coming in by ambulance will get you seen quicker. And also, bring someone familiar with your medical history if you go to the ER for something serious. Even if you have to drag them out of work or school or across the county. Also bring someone who is prepared to kick up a fuss on your behalf.

Note: the ambulance bit, of course, only applies in actual emergencies. But for things like suspected heart attacks, strokes, aneurysms, anaphylaxis, or really, anything possibly fatal, take the ambulance.

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