Dying woman denied help and dies

[Hurricaneman]

http://tinyurl.com/2b3ff4


I hope there is some type of law suit for this eggrgous lack of help



Edited to shorten link by CM

[Cyclenall]

You should really shorten that link to something different.

Another example of how Hospitals can be unreliable. Charges should be placed and someone should lose their job.

[JonathanBelles]

I heard about this on the news. Two people called 911, and the operaters wouldnt help b/c they were already in a hospital and couldnt do anything! This just makes me mad.

[Aslkahuna]

The woman's companion then went to a Police Kiosk for help and the Deputies ran a check and found a want on her and try to Arrest her! They had her in a wheel chair and were trying to get her into a squad car when she died. This is the same LA County Sheriff's Department of Paris Hilton infamy. The family has already said that they are going to sue-enough to put the Hospital, ironically named after MLK, out of business. She left behind children and grandchildren.

Steve

[Shelby6977]

I was appalled when I read this and I believe the family SHOULD sue, not only the hospital but the sherriffs department as well. Someone needs to be held accountable for this. You enter the Emergency Room because you are in DIRE need of help. To take someone OUT of the Emergency Room to arrest them is nothing more than stupid!

[TexasStooge]

Completely rediculous, I say.

[Hurricaneman]

Makes the LA police, which I forgot to mention look like a joke

[Kelarie]

I was appalled when I read this and I believe the family SHOULD sue, not only the hospital but the sherriffs department as well. Someone needs to be held accountable for this. You enter the Emergency Room because you are in DIRE need of help. To take someone OUT of the Emergency Room to arrest them is nothing more than stupid!

The fact is the ERs are not used as ERs anymore. They are used as primary care clinics. So someone with a serious illness will have to wait while the kid with a cough goes in first. The system has broken down due to an influx of people without medical insurance.

[azsnowman]

I was appalled when I read this and I believe the family SHOULD sue, not only the hospital but the sherriffs department as well. Someone needs to be held accountable for this. You enter the Emergency Room because you are in DIRE need of help. To take someone OUT of the Emergency Room to arrest them is nothing more than stupid!

The fact is the ERs are not used as ERs anymore. They are used as primary care clinics. So someone with a serious illness will have to wait while the kid with a cough goes in first. The system has broken down due to an influx of people without medical insurance.

AMEN!!!!!! I cannot BELIEVE the 911 operator...if one of OUR dispatchers did this, there would be SO much sh*t hit the fan

Illegal "aliens", not immigrants, are flooding ER's in Arizona dam near bankrupting the hospitals because of their inability to pay!

[Category 5]

I had a feeling stuff like this happened. I cut my ear open once and waited in the ER waiting room for 5 HOURS!

They should be sued and or shut down. And the workers on duty should be fired without question. There is no excuse for that.

[Terrell]

This is one of the few cases where I think someone not helping someone should be prosecuted. Only because the ER workers job is to help out people who need emergency medical care.

[Aslkahuna]

No, the new job for Emergency Room workers in States like CA and AZ is to provide free health care to illegals.

Steve

[Regit]

The problem is not overcrowding in the emergency room. From what I've heard, the hospital was not exceptionally busy.

The problem is that in a lot of ERs all across the nation (my local ER is a prime example), the staff is not taught triage. They have absolutely no clue how to prioritize patients based on the severity of the illness. On top of the lack of education, many of the staff have a God complex, which is a dangerous combination. At my local hospital, during the peak of flu season, the ER was packed with people with flu symptoms. A man having symptoms of a heart attack was made to wait 5 hours in the waiting room simply because no one in the ER had been taught how to manage triage.

One of the reason so many in this country do not trust the healthcare system is that the first impression people get of their hospitals is the emergency room. Unfortunately, many hospitals just don't make them a high priority.

[x-y-no]

Interesting Wikipedia entry about that hospital:

Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital (MLK-Harbor), formerly known as Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center (King/Drew), is a public hospital in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, but the hospital is located in unincorporated Willowbrook, California.

MLK-Harbor is operated by the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services (DHS) and has 48 beds. In recent years, widely publicized problems related to incompetence and mismanagement caused the hospital to undergo a radical overhaul: bringing the number of beds down to 42 from 233.[1] Since 2004, 260 hospital staffers, including 41 doctors, had been fired or had resigned as a result of disciplinary proceedings. It currently has 1,400 employees. To alleviate the large loss of capacity, The Los Angeles County Medical Alert Center(MAC) contracts ambulances take approximately 250 patients per month to other local hospitals. [1]

At the turn of the 21st century and before its crisis, MLK-Harbor (then MLK/Drew) had 537 beds, was the teaching hospital of the adjacent Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science, and spread over a 38.5-acre site that includes a dormitory for medical residents; with 2,238 full-time employees, and in 2004 treated 11,000 inpatients and 167,000 outpatients. Located near areas of high crime, the hospital has a very active trauma unit. In 2003, it handled 2,150 gunshot wounds and other life-threatening injuries.

...

[JQ Public]

Well from the looks of it people don't make regular doctors anymore so instead of getting her gall stones treated...she left them untreated. As a result they go to the hospital throwing up and pooping blood with due to a perforated colon. If people weren't so scared to make regular appointments with the doctor instead of just going to the ER or urgent care all the time she could have saved her own life. But the way she died should not have happened. Looked like a place that was understaffed. One report said a janitor was mopping up bloody vomit from the area but didn't do anything to help. I know its 'wrong' to blame the victim, but the blame looks like it can be spread out quite nicely.

[Regit]

Well from the looks of it people don't make regular doctors anymore so instead of getting her gall stones treated...she left them untreated. As a result they go to the hospital throwing up and pooping blood with due to a perforated colon. If people weren't so scared to make regular appointments with the doctor instead of just going to the ER or urgent care all the time she could have saved her own life. But the way she died should not have happened. Looked like a place that was understaffed. One report said a janitor was mopping up bloody vomit from the area but didn't do anything to help. I know its 'wrong' to blame the victim, but the blame looks like it can be spread out quite nicely.

There are a lot of cases where the victim shares blame, but all I can see here is someone who was screwed every way she turned.

First and foremost, she had an emergency and was in a place where someone should be expected to receive emergency care. She had no way to know the level of incompentence with which that hospital was run.

Second, America is a country that loves for people to get very sick before getting care. A full 15% of Americans have no insurance. Unfortunately, the other 85% aren't whistling Dixie. A huge percentage of those have coverage that barely covers anything. When they do get sick, their crooked providers refuse to cover anything because of the small print on their policy. Then, they blame the sick customer for not reading the entire policy word-for-word before seeking medical care. Even if they had, it wouldn't have helped since the insurance companies tend to make up stuff as they go alone. A lot of insurance providers refuse to cover anything at the patients' local hospitals. The insurance industry is nothing but government-endorsed organized crime.

To make matters even worse, Medicaid encourages patients to use the Emergency Room as their primary care provider. If you were already poor enough to be on medicaid and it was cheaper to go to the ER than a doctor, where would you go?

[Category 5]

No, the new job for Emergency Room workers in States like CA and AZ is to provide free health care to illegals.

Steve

That made my morning

Seriously though they should take patients in the order of how serious the problem is. Then nonsense like this doesn't happen.

[HollynLA]

I don't know about all areas so I'll speak about my area of southeastern Louisiana. We don't have alot of illegals but still have some. Our emergency rooms are filled with those with a hangnail or the sniffles. Why? Most of the patients are on medicaid and just assume go to the ER than to the doctor since they don't have to pay for any of it no matter what. On the other hand, those with medical insurance better make darn sure that their situation is a true emergency or else coverage will be denied for the ER trip. I don't want to stereotype, but many people I know whose children receive medicaid are at the ER quite often even for basic needs that can easily be treated at a doctor's office.