If you can afford the Mayo Clinic, that is. Otherwise your more likely to suffer the fate of this woman who died unattended and untreated in plain sight at a New York hospital emergency room:
City hospital officials said they were shocked by surveillance footage showing a woman falling from her chair, writhing on the floor and dying as workers failed to help for more than an hour.
Surveillance video shows a woman lying on the hospital floor for almost an hour before anyone helped her.Surveillance video shows a woman lying on the hospital floor for almost an hour before anyone helped her.
Esmin Green, 49, had been waiting in the emergency room for nearly 24 hours when she toppled from her seat at 5:32 a.m. June 19, falling face-down on the floor.
She was dead by 6:35, when someone on the medical staff, flagged down by a person in the waiting room, finally approached, nudged Green with her foot and gently prodded her shoulder, as if to wake her. […]
Until the staffer’s appearance, Green’s collapse barely caused a ripple. Other patients waiting a few feet away didn’t react. Security guards and a member of the hospital’s staff appeared to notice her prone body at least three times but made no visible attempt to see whether she needed help.
Words fail me.
God. Twenty-four hours she waited to be taken care of. And people talk about the “long waits” for medical care Canada and ask if we want a system like that instead of the amazing medical care we have here in the states. Um, yeah, I do.
Now, today is one of those days.
The woman was admitting herself to the psychiatric unit at Kings County hospital. There were no beds available and she was waiting in the waiting room for one to open up. To imply that she was in an emergency situation because she was in the Emergency Room is misleading.
I do not excuse the actions of the staff. I would bet, however, that having a patient in her situation lay down on the floor is a sight quite familiar to hospital workers. The cause of her death is apparently still unknown, but may well have nothing to do with her reason for seeking admittance to the hospital.
Let’s leave the cherry-picking to the Republicans.
The fact that they fired those involved would seem to be an admission of some kind.
I don’t think the workers are completely without culpability.
[please excuse my profanity]
You know mister, your patronizing crap is abusive. Why are you defending this bankrupt, non-service system?
1. Why are no beds available? In our multi-billion dollar health care system, the most expensive in the world, are there no beds available?
Answer that.
I hope you get “sick” soon and head off to the nearest floor waiting to be noticed.
4. Yes, I’m sure she had a vial of cyanide with her, “just in case” she wanted to off herself. But I’m sure that she admitted herself because she was perfectly well, didn’t need help, but just wanted to keep herself busy for a few hours . . . What kind of fucking crap goes through your mind every day Ed J? Pure hate for other humans?
Maybe Mr Ed J you’ve never been in an emergency room of an urban hospital, I don’t have any evidence from your post to suppose you ever have been in one, but I could be wrong. Your patronizing the vast, huge, uncaring abortion of health care that our nation suffers under smells really really bad.
You don’t seem to have the faintest idea what you are talking about here, and I condemn you for trying to defend a very broken system, broken even worse because that hospital is a public hospital, in a nation dominated by capitalist greed.
I’d love to troll rate you but I believe in free speech.
incomplete nature of the information presented in the diary. It was not a defense of our abhorrent health-care system.
I said that a person lying on the floor is not an unusual sight. Please show me where I said it was “perfectly OK”.
My knowledge of NYC hospitals? I was born in one and lived for many years in the City of New York. The Bay Ridge Volunteer Ambulance Corp in Brooklyn saved my life. I’ve also had horrendous experiences in city hospitals which should not be allowed to happen to anyone, anywhere.
I have “pure hate”? Read your post.
Your calm reply was appreciated. But I don’t think people lying unattended on the floor of a hospital is ok.
We have had ghastly emergency room experiences, all in big cities, both public and private hospitals, beginning in the 1960s. One of which ended in the revocation of privileges for the attending due to our formal complaint. He apparently had had a number of complaints and a dr friend let us know if we filed one, he’d be toast.
As for our fairly poor, rural community–been to the emergency room twice and was treated like a family member. But then they are not overwhelmed as are the ER’s in big cities. The latter are a national disgrace. and have been for a very long time.
Given this initial account of conditions at this hospital I would have to wonder just what kind of treatment she would have received if she had been admitted. Her being there for 24 hours doesn’t seem to be that uncommon. Beyond the fact of her dying unattended the other horror story might be the conditions and treatment-non-treatment of people at this ‘hospital’.
Horror stories like this abound and always have for certain hospitals for the poor and under this administration with the enormous budget cuts in federal funding for these hospitals and other hospitals I’m sure this story is just the tip of the iceberg.
Agreed.
I just hope that no one on this blog thinks that this is some unusual case. This case is just the norm, and has been in American health care for a very, very long time.
And not just in New York City.
If you’ve never had to deal with an emergency room, and your impression of a hospital comes from teevee shows, then you are living in a fantasy world.
This woman’s fate is repeated on a daily basis all over this fantastically rich nation.
(Oh, that’s fantastically rich for the top 1%!!)
And let me tell you, black women are expendable when it comes to health care.
I have had white physicians make asinine and even racist comments towards me. One blondie even refused to even come in the room and talk to me after my surgery, preferring to stand outside the door with her clipboard and say, “You OK?”
Latino and Asian nurses and nursing assistants in the system sometimes spend far more time and effort with their own or with whites than with blacks. It can be a cultural thing…and don’t tell me something like this ain’t real, because it is. It truly is.
Touching patients and talking intimately with them is part of patient care as well. Being a doctor is no longer about having a vocation, it’s about making money. Choosing this kind of calling doesn’t require you to be as choosy with the kinds of patients you will see or minister to. No doubt, this is the kind of attitude that killed this woman, who if they had seen within half an hour, might have lived.
Disgusting. Horrible. Genocidal, even.
The disparity in care between any of the dozens of hospital facilities we have in this area here and the typical inner city hospital involved in this incident should shame everyone who calls themselves an American.
Once again, the HAVES get the care they need in most instances.
The HAVE-NOTS die in the floor unnoticed.
A textbook example of John Edward’s “Two Americas”.
(McKlatchey KC Star)
18 veterans die every day by suicide. Words fail me.
Have you seen Ground Truth?
A documentary made two years ago about US veterans of the Iraq War. The Wikipedia page has more info, and also at the very bottom links to a low-res version available for free. There also may be local viewings in your area.
3 words:
Wiki “Kitty Genovese”
that’s all….
Words rarely fail me. People commonly do.
In both cases, I do my best to return the favor.
Frankly, the only reason the press keeps saying “Best health care…” is that most of the people who can afford to use it get it through their employers. They don’t see it.
My husband’s cancer treatment? The doctor came right out and said: “Since you have good insurance, we can give you the full treatment…”
My son? He goes to Europe for most of his medical care, but managed to get MRSA waiting six hours for treatment for a burn in an ER.
Bandaid solutions for America’s health care system won’t work. Only universal, single payer will change the way we look at this basic right.
I would not be so sure about that option, either.
Killed by neglect or by overmedication/unnecessary surgery/incomplete understanding of disease, you are still dead.
Do not buy into the Dr. Big Brother/Big Pharma/Big Insurance/Big Media/Big Advertising bullshit.
Only you can prevent premature grave digging.
Only you.
AG
America has become the monster that America fears most.
Don’t worry. Your hero John McCain will fix it.