911 Dispatchers Denied Dying Woman Help

evrita

So how were the medics supposed to help? Not all ambulances have medics on some are only I tech or basics. She was in a higher level care hospital and they wernt helping her. If the ambulance took her out and she signed out AMA then she died in the back of that ambulance then who would be at fault. A person who has an emergency we take the to the nearest hospital it is the law. They have to be somewhat stable in order to do a hospital to hospital transfer. If they are not stable then a MICU comes in or a life flight.

The hospital messed up plain and simple

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Never Take Life Too Serious NONE of Us Are Getting Out Alive !!

evrita

Sad to say probally because most people dont have the money for a cab but have medicare or medicaid and that pays for the ambulance. You know most use the ER because they dont have a dentist or a PCP so if you have a toothache call the ambulance medicaid will pay for it and before you flame me not everyone does it but a lot do.

It takes a to of work to transfer someone from hospital to hospital they have to stablize the pt first then give report to the hospital see if the hospital will take them and then call the ambulance and then see how long it will take for that ambulance to get there if they have the right personal.

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Never Take Life Too Serious NONE of Us Are Getting Out Alive !!

Jolie Rouge

LA hospital faces new threat of closure
By ROBERT JABLON, Associated Press Writer
42 minutes ago

LOS ANGELES - An inner-city hospital struggled to survive Wednesday amid a new report of breakdowns in patient care, the replacement of its chief medical officer and an ultimatum to correct long-running problems or close.

Newly released tapes of 911 calls reveal that a woman who lay bleeding on the floor of the emergency room died last month after dispatchers refused to contact paramedics or an ambulance to take her to another facility.

The woman's treatment was "callous, it was a horrible thing," Los Angeles County Supervisor Yvonne Burke said Wednesday.

Earlier this week, the county Board of Supervisors grilled health officials about conditions at Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital. It ordered them to return in two weeks with a plan to deal with a hospital shutdown if it is unable to correct deficiencies laid out in a federal inspection that concluded emergency room patients were in "immediate jeopardy."

The federal review was based, in part, on a report that a man with a brain tumor waited four days in the emergency room when he needed to be transferred to another facility for lifesaving brain surgery.

After the inspection last week, the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services gave the hospital 23 days to correct problems or face a loss of federal funding. That could force it to close.

Burke said the county-run hospital is a crucial facility and that nearby hospitals could not handle its patient load. "I can't tell you whether it can be fixed but ... the community can not stand to lose another emergency room," she said.

Dr. Roger Peeks, the hospital's chief medical officer, was placed on "ordered absence" Monday and replaced on an interim basis by Dr. Robert Splawn, senior medical officer for the county health department. Department spokesman Michael Wilson confirmed the change but declined to elaborate Wednesday, saying it was a personnel matter.

Health officials are "doing everything in our power to help MLK-Harbor meet national standards," Dr. Bruce Chernof, director of the health department, said in a statement.

In a report to the supervisors on Tuesday, Chernof said quality of care had improved but warned that there was no "roadmap" for what he called the most difficult effort to "reinvent a failing hospital" ever undertaken in the United States. The hospital has served "thousands of patients well and a few very poorly," he said.

The hospital, formerly known as King-Drew, was built several years after the 1965 Watts riot to provide medical care in the South Los Angeles area. It has been cited more than a dozen times in 3 1/2 years for inadequate care that has led to patient deaths and injuries.

The facility came under renewed scrutiny with the release of the 911 calls in the case of Edith Isabel Rodriguez, 43, who died of a perforated bowel on May 9. Her death was ruled accidental by the Los Angeles County coroner's office.

Relatives said she lay in pain for 45 minutes before dying, a delay Chernof has called "inexcusable."

A security camera may have recorded the scene, but the tape was not being made public because of patient privacy laws, Wilson said Wednesday. "We know we have the responsibility to make sure justice is done for our mother," said Rodriguez's son, Edmundo Rodriguez, 25.

In his report, Chernof said the hospital violated requirements to medically screen the woman. The person who failed to arrange the examination resigned and others in the emergency room were "counseled and written findings placed in their personnel files," the report said.

Rodriguez's boyfriend, Jose Prado, used a pay phone outside the hospital to call 911 and told a dispatcher, through a Spanish interpreter: "My wife is dying and the nurses don't want to help her out."

A second 911 call was placed eight minutes later by a bystander who requested that an ambulance be sent to take Rodriguez to another hospital for care. The dispatcher argued with the woman over whether there really was an emergency, refused to call paramedics and eventually cut off the call.

Sheriff's department spokesman Steve Whitmore said the department was reviewing the handling of the 911 calls by two of its dispatchers.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070614/...Fj3eb2ys 0NUE

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Laissez les bon temps rouler! Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.** a 4 day work week & sex slaves ~ I say Tyt for PRESIDENT! Not to be taken internally, literally or seriously ....Suki ebaynni IS THAT BETTER ?

okie

About 10 years ago my sister had been really sick and she was puking up some nasty stuff. She had told them she was having some pain also. She went to the ER and she sat there for hours puking up in the waiting room. By the time they got to her she was minutes from her appendix rupturing and they had to rush her to the OR. She's lucky they finally looked at her when they did because she was only minutes from dying.

gmyers

I'm sorry but this is inexcusable. There's no reason they didn't treat her but ignorance and stupidity. I hope they fire every person that failed to treat someone that was bleeding from there mouth and dieing. I don't see how anyone could sit there and watch someone die and not help. Where were the doctors or nurses that work there. If they don't care about treating the patients then they ought to close down. I believe criminal charges should be brought against the people who refused to help her. It's scary that this is probably the only hospital that the people have to go to that live there. I don't think I'd ever go there unless I was unconscious and didn't know better. That poor woman deserved a lot better than what happened to her.

Tasha405

I actually never even thought about why someone didn't just take her to another place. I was focused on why they didn't help her. So you made me think and I love you for that because we all know I don't do much thinking! LOL!

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Jolie Rouge

Feds pull funding for L.A. hospital
By ROBERT JABLON, Associated Press Writer
Sat Aug 11, 2:09 AM ET

LOS ANGELES - Federal regulators said Friday that they are pulling $200 million in funding from a troubled hospital that serves one of the city's poorest neighborhoods, forcing it to all but shut down.

The decision came after the county-run Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital failed two federal inspections.

At a news conference late Friday, Los Angeles County's chief medical officer told reporters that the hospital would close its emergency room Friday night and that patients would be moved to other hospitals within two weeks. The emergency room was closed at 7 p.m. Friday.

"We brought every resource to bear, but in the end it just wasn't enough, fast enough," Dr. Bruce Chernof said.

King-Harbor will remain open 16 hours a day, seven days a week, to offer outpatient care to people with routine medical problems, Chernof said. Ambulances will be available to take the more seriously ill to other hospitals.

During the past few years, Los Angeles County tried to improve patient care through disciplining workers, reorganizing management, closing the trauma unit and reducing the number of inpatient beds to 48.

Yet Herb Kuhn, acting deputy administrator for the U.S. Centers of Medicare and Medical Services, said a federal inspection as recently as last month found "conditions at the facility have placed the health and safety of patients at great risk."

"While some progress has been made, significant problems persist," Kuhn said in a statement.

The federal agency plans to end its hospital provider agreement with King-Harbor on Wednesday. The hospital can apply for reinstatement, but that would take three to four months because federal regulators would want to be assured that King-Harbor's problems have been corrected.

The federal action means the hospital is no longer eligible for reimbursement for the costs of caring for Medicare patients. The county has warned that loss of the funding — about half the hospital's budget — would force King-Harbor to close.

King-Harbor, which has about 1,600 employees, handled about 50,000 emergency room patients last year. A contingency plan is already in place to shift patients to other hospitals, and officials have said they would try to find a private operator to take over the facility and reopen it, perhaps in a year.

"This is good news because it brings closure to this never-ending saga," county Supervisor Michael Antonovich said in a statement. "It allows the county to move forward in bringing quality medical care to an area where the status quo chose to keep a bag over their head."

The hospital was built after the 1965 Watts riots to bring health care to poor, minority communities in south Los Angeles. In recent years, poor patient care has been blamed for several deaths.

A woman died in May after writhing untreated on the floor of the emergency room lobby for 45 minutes. In February, a brain tumor patient languished in the emergency room for four days before his family drove him to another hospital for emergency surgery.

The hospital failed a federal inspection in September 2006 but managed to remain open under a reorganization that shifted services to Harbor-UCLA Medical Center and reduced inpatient beds from 250 to 48.

The second inspection last month found that the hospital still had failed to comply with federal standards in eight of 23 areas, ranging from nursing services to patients' rights, according to a letter to King's administrator, Antoinette Epps.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070811/...dfmdpuJa24c A

__________________
Laissez les bon temps rouler! Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.** a 4 day work week & sex slaves ~ I say Tyt for PRESIDENT! Not to be taken internally, literally or seriously ....Suki ebaynni IS THAT BETTER ?

freeby4me

Great....now there will be no question at all as to why patients die by the armloads there

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Jolie Rouge

No charges planned in death of ignored LA patient
By ROBERT JABLON, Associated Press Writer
2 hours, 11 minutes ago

LOS ANGELES - No criminal charges will be filed against medical staff at a troubled inner-city hospital over the death of a homeless woman who writhed in pain on the emergency room floor for nearly an hour, a county prosecutor concluded Tuesday.

A nurse at Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital was not criminally negligent despite refusing to examine Edith Rodriguez — who was kneeling and screaming in pain with a perforated bowel — and telling her to get off the floor, according to the report by Deputy District Attorney Susan Schwartz.

"Prompt intervention would not have saved her life," Schwartz wrote in the report to the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department about the May 2007 death.

"It cannot be proved beyond a reasonable doubt" that the nurse's actions were a substantial factor in the death "or that any member of the MLK nursing or medical staff was criminally negligent," the report said.

Doctors made a wrong diagnosis and failed to treat the patient properly until it was too late, but "a mistake, even a negligent mistake, does not amount to 'criminal negligence,'" the report said.

The county Department of Health Services, which oversees the hospital, had not seen the report and could not immediately comment, spokesman Michael Wilson said.

Rodriguez's death was one of several that came amid allegations of shoddy care at the county-run hospital, which was built in South Los Angeles after the 1965 Watts riot to provide much-needed medical care to the poor, heavily minority area.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services revoked $200 million in federal funding last summer, and the hospital, previously called Martin Luther King Jr.-Drew Medical Center, was closed to all but outpatient care.

Rodriguez, 43, died of the perforated bowel on May 9, 2007. The report said she had been seen at the hospital at least six times in the month before her death and had spent 14 hours there a day earlier.

Doctors diagnosed gallstones and had prescribed painkillers, the report said.

She was brought in again by two county police officers responding to a call of a woman "yelling for help" outside the hospital entrance, the report said. She was brought into the emergency room complaining, "I am hurting, something burst in my stomach."

She also vomited and slid out of a wheelchair several times, but the triage nurse — who determines the order in which patients are seen — refused to examine her, telling county police officers that the woman had already been seen and discharged, the report said.

At one point, the report said, Rodriguez was "on her knees and screaming in pain," and the nurse, Linda Ruttlen, told her: "Get off the floor and onto a chair."

The nurse then ignored Rodriguez as she lay in a fetal position, according to the report.

Another patient in the emergency room called 911 and asked for an ambulance for Rodriguez, but the emergency operator refused because Rodriguez was already in an emergency room, the report said.

Eventually, county police who had taken Rodriguez into the emergency room decided to take her to jail on a parole violation so she could receive medical care there, but she became unresponsive as she was taken in a wheelchair to a patrol car, then later pronounced dead in the emergency room, the report said.

The coroner's office ruled her death accidental. The district attorney's office last year declined to file criminal charges against the county police officers who were arresting Rodriguez, saying they acted properly and with compassion.

The new report called Ruttlen's failure to triage Rodriguez "reckless, in light of Rodriguez' observable physical signs of acute distress and in the face of repeated warnings from other hospital staff and patients that Rodriguez was in grave distress."

However, Dr. Henry B. Hwu, an expert in colon and rectal surgery who reviewed the case for the district attorney's office, believed that Rodriguez probably had reached the "point of no return" at least 24 hours before her final visit to the emergency room and could not have been saved.

In turn, Ruttlen, he said, "was led into a false sense of security because the patient had been seen five times in the two weeks prior" to her death, according to the report.

Ruttlen could not be reached for comment Tuesday. There was no phone listing in her name in Los Angeles.

Another reviewer, lawyer and physician Dr. Mark Brown, noted that Rodriguez had a history of drug abuse and that hospital staff could "rationally conclude" that she was only trying to enter the hospital again to obtain "food, shelter and narcotics and was not in medical crisis."

The decision not to file criminal charges was disappointing, said Franklin Casco Jr., an attorney for Rodriguez's family in a $45 million lawsuit claiming negligence, medical malpractice, discrimination and wrongful death.

"Lady justice may be blind in the eyes of the district attorney's office when it comes to the death of Ms. Rodriguez, but I guarantee you that lady justice will not be blind in a civil courtroom," Casco said.

Casco acknowledged it was hard to file criminal charges in such cases.

"Did they intentionally kill her? It's really tough," he said. "I wouldn't say it was clear-cut."

The lawsuit names the county, the hospital, Ruttlen, other medical staff, five county police officers and the company that provided private guards for the hospital. The suit seeks $1 million in damages for each of the 45 minutes that Rodriguez spent on the emergency room floor. The suit, filed in November, has yet to go to trial.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080709/...wbLrfHBH2oc A

__________________
Laissez les bon temps rouler! Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.** a 4 day work week & sex slaves ~ I say Tyt for PRESIDENT! Not to be taken internally, literally or seriously ....Suki ebaynni IS THAT BETTER ?

hblueeyes

It seems to me that they were indidfferent which is a criminal crime. Like most county run hospitals, they are under staffed and underfunded and misappropriate funds. Cook County hospital decides it is better to give 6 figure incomes to realtors who act as health administrators. I must say however that from what I have heard, Cook County hospital gives excellent care. The care is awful in their sub hospitals like Oak Forest.

It also seems to me that they had waited too long to seek care. But I do not have the details of what caused her perforation. The fact that she was spuing blood made everyone at the emergency room at risk. Blood is a definite biohazard.

Me

MsLynn

did ya'll see the video??? the security guard went in, saw her on the floor and just turned and walked away...didn't check or nothing..

now i have seen people fake being unconscious(or try to, not as easy as it seems, lol) to try to get back sooner, even if the hospital thought thats whats was happening, they should have at lease sent her back to triage... I think the person who Triaged her is the one most in the wrong.. they are supposed to know the signs/symptoms of possible life threatening conditions.. trust me i know they can make an exception even if they don't have a bed in the ER.. if they think someone is truely in danger..we've had gurneys in the hallway when he had more criticals than we could deal with