Callers pleaded with 911 to help woman on King-Harbor floor

[Sequoia]

As Edith Isabel Rodriguez lay dying last month on the floor of the emergency room lobby at Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital, her boyfriend and a female bystander pleaded with 911 dispatchers for help.

Rodriguez's boyfriend, Jose Prado, had found her bleeding from her mouth and writhing in pain and tried to alert hospital staff. When he was ignored, he went to a pay phone outside the hospital and dialed 911.

"My wife is dying and the nurses don't want to help her out," he said in Spanish through an interpreter at 1:43 a.m. on May 9.

Eight minutes later, an unidentified female bystander also made an impassioned plea. "It's a lady on the ground here in the emergency room at Martin Luther King and they are overlooking her, claiming that she's been discharged," the female caller said. "And she's definitely sick and there's a guy that's ignoring her."
Within a half-hour, the 43-year-old mother of three was dead.

Subsequent investigations have shown that she writhed on the ground for 45 minutes while being ignored by hospital staff. At one point, a janitor cleaned around her. The episode was captured by the hospital's video cameras.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-king13jun13,0,941594.story?coll=la-home-center

[AspenRose]

1. Oh my God

What the hell is WRONG with people????

:nuke:

[KatyaR]

16. "Compassionate Conservatism" at its finest.

But I'll bet you 10 to 1 that 80 percent of those people that ignored that poor woman call themselves good Christians.

Makes me want to :puke: . . . .

[spoony]

42. Why the hell introduce that?

This story isn't bad enough? You need a better angle to dig in on? Jesus.

[Tulum_Moon]

64. That hospital is the worst!

And it has been for years! Decades! People die there all the time. I am so NOT surprised by this. Which is sad in itself.

[Matariki]

2. No health care crisis in america?

This is so unbelievably sad. Really sad.

[ret5hd]

3. They probably thought she was trying to get one of those "recreational abortions"

or maybe they thought she was trying to scam a free nights stay in a luxury hospital suite...

or maybe they were just uncaring sadistic bastards.

[MNDemNY]

8. Maybe they thought she was an illegal

[ret5hd]

9. And what would that have to do with anything? Seeing as, by law, emergency...

care is available to all regardless of immigration status.

[MNDemNY]

10. oh, yah, I forgot, We're a nation of laws.

[slowry]

13. ? n/t

[MNDemNY]

14. drip drip

:sarcasm:

[Skittles]

22. don't feed the trolls

put their sorry ass on IGNORE

[ComerPerro]

27. Congrats on being born a US citizen. What an amazing accomplishment. You must be so proud

[Matariki]

33. I think MNDemNY was being sarcastic.

adding to the list of reasons why 'good' people would ignore the woman.

[ComerPerro]

35. I read it as "they are here illegally, so therefore no one has to treat them"

as in, if you break one law, no one has to follow laws for you

[MNDemNY]

60. You read funny.

[proud2BlibKansan]

32. My thoughts as well

[Kingshakabobo]

4. Holy shit!

WTF is the matter with this hospital staff. I hope they do time and lose their licenses.

>>>>>>>>"May God strike you too for acting the way you just acted," the woman told the dispatcher.<<<<<<<<

.....that too......if there is a god.

[slowry]

5. Imagine the desparation of calling 911 while in a hospital...

I know I fucking can't.

[spoony]

45. And then the operators acting like snarky assholes to boot.

I mean what's with those people? Too much exposure to tragedy? Dulling of the sympathetic part of their mind?

This whole story is so grotesque. :(

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

51. Not the only time it ever happened...

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/02/business/02alarm.html?ei=5070&en=f88f0de6338d33f6&ex=1181880000&pagewanted=all

April 2, 2007
Some Hospitals Call 911 to Save Their Patients
By REED ABELSON

Should a hospital be able to handle a medical emergency?

The answer may seem self-evident. But patients at some hospitals may find the staff resorting to what someone might do at home in a crisis: call 911 for an ambulance.

That happened recently in Texas, where a 44-year-old man named Steve Spivey developed breathing problems after spine surgery. No physician was working there when the staff first recognized he was in trouble. They phoned 911, and he was taken to a nearby full-service hospital, where he was pronounced dead a short time later.

The episode occurred at a small hospital that is owned and run by doctors — one of roughly 140 such hospitals around the country, with nearly two dozen more under development, that are set up to specialize in certain types of procedures like heart surgery, back operations and hip replacements.

...

[Beaverhausen]

6. I can't even summon the right words here

this is just crazyness.

I really hope Michael Moore's new film wakes people up and makes an impact.

[Name removed]

7. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[ProdigalJunkMail]

37. excellent job of trying to link the death of a human being

to Christians. I bet you are right. They were probably all pastors of local churches. :sarcasm:

sP

[spoony]

43. Seems to what some people live for.

Instead of pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey, it's pin-the-atrocity-on-the-Christian.

[kestrel91316]

11. MLK is on the verge of being completely shut down. IMHO it's past time.

[Zodiak]

12. I do not know why

but the "cleaning around the woman" on camera is the viual that I find the most vivid. The callousness it takes for that.

[Cabcere]

20. I agree.

I mean, the whole story is bad enough, but that part just made me want to a) vomit and b) completely give up all faith in the human race. :grr: WTF is wrong with people?! :cry:

[Joe Chi Minh]

40. Puts you in mind of the good doctor's words in his Fear and Loathing

on the Campaign Trail:

"....Richard Nixon will almost certainly be re-elected for another four years as Presdient of the United States. If the current polls are reliable - even if they aren't, the sheer size of the margin makes the numbers themselves unimportant - Nixon will be re-elected by a huge majority of Americans who feel he is not only more honest and more trustworthy than George McGovern, but also more likely to end the war in Vietnam.

The polls also indicate that Nixon will get a comfortable majority of the Youth Vote. And that he might carry all fifty states.

Well... maybe so. This may be the year when we finally come face to face with ourselves; finally just lay back and say it - that we are really just a nation of 220 million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns, and no qualms at all about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable."

The last few elections (according to the real returns) now suggest very much otherwise, but something like this makes you realise something of the degree and extent of the pernicious influence these Neocons have exerted in the intervening years. In his parable about Lazarus and the rich man, he didn't just say that the rich man didn't give Lazarus any help, but that nobody did. Apart from the street dog who licked his sores.

[qanda]

15. This story has me very shaken

I'm not sure why, perhaps it's because I watched my children over the last couple of days try to help two baby birds which had fallen from their nest. Those birds died but it wasn't because nobody cared to help them. I watched my children cry and make caskets for those little birds after they died. Why wouldn't anyone help that woman-- was her life less significant than a tiny bird?

[Sequoia]

28. I'm sorry, poor little birds.

Not trying to be religious, but this verse came to mind:

"Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don't be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows." Matthew 10:19-31


Guess the people at the hospital forgot this one. A few years back when I was taking my daughter to pre-school we saw a baby bird entangled in the mesh which the gardner put down to hold the new grass. I thought it was dead but she saw it's tiny chest move and brought it in. My husband even went out and bought a bird cage which we couldn't even afford. That evening the bird was fine and we let it go. We liked to think he hung around and sang for us in the tree after that.

[Sukie1941]

17. My story not life threatening

but when I was in the hospital (short-stay unit) in Medford, Oregon for a sinus surgery, the surgery happened later in the day than anticipated. When I got out of surgery, short stay section was closed for the day. I was put on the second floor in a private room. I complained to the nurse that I was sick to my stomach and they discharged me anyway. I went to the Pharmacy on the discharge level to get meds to take home (my mom was with me)--I was in a wheel chair at this point. The pharmacist came out from behind his glass cage and looked me in the eye and said, "You don't look well enough to go home." I told him I agreed but I was being discharged anyway. When I got to my Mom's house she helped me inside. I promptly threw up blood all over the place. That is why I felt so sick, could barely hold my head up (our bodies don't digest our own blood). I did complain to the hospital's administrative offices a few days later. Nothing came of it. I had yet another surgery (and yet another after that) with different doctors. One was at the same hospital. Second doc said she would not allow me to be discharged without her and my own agreement (which is how it happened). Third surgery was in Portland, Oregon. No problems there.

I learned not to trust much. It is really important to talk with your doctors about such things and especially good to have an advocate with you who will speak out immediately if things don't look right.

[annabanana]

18. Dear God this is horrifying..

It is incomprehensible to me.

What must that hospital staff see, day in and day out, to make them that hard, that callous?

[ellenfl]

19. apparently she did not help the bottom line. eom

[Quantess]

63. exactly.

[FatDave]

21. My hospital horror story.

Last month a nurse almost killed my mother.

My mom had what would have been outpatient surgery, but since she is 77 years old, they kept her in a room, the plan was overnight. I talked to her right after the surgery and she seemed fine. I live about 6 hours from her, so I didn't actually see her, but the surgery was minor enough that I knew the only real risk was somebody of that age going under general anesthesia. And like I said, just an hour or two after the surgery she was exactly her usual self.

The next morning I called her to see how she was doing and she was incoherent. Slurring her speech like crazy, saying she couldn't think straight. She said they wanted to send her home once she could use the bathroom on her own, but she hadn't been able to do so yet because she couldn't walk well enough. I immediately called my sister, who was already on her way to the hospital, saying "I think something's not right, see what you think." She agreed something was wrong. My mom also complained to my sister that she had been shaking uncontrollably.

So I called her nurse. She said she's fine, it's just from the anesthesia. I said "Well she was fine yesterday right after surgery, something's wrong here, go get her doctor." She told me the doctor had just seen her. Eventually I was screaming at her to get her doctor in there, and she wouldn't do it.

Eventually my sister, brother, and sister-in-law were all in her room trying to get her some medical attention in a fucking hospital and unable to do it. Eventually, my sister asked to see my mom's chart, and this same nurse who wouldn't do a thing for me said "no, that's not allowed" even though my mother had given her power of attorney. Eventually the nurse said she would let my sister see the chart if a doctor OK'ed it. So she got a doctor for that.

The doctor took one look at the chart and realized that they had given my mom 8 times her regular dose of the antidepressant she takes nightly. The gave her 200mg instead of 25mg. The shaking she complained about was convulsions. The drugs eventually wore off and my mom was fine again.

The nurse who wouldn't get us a doctor is the same one who fucked up her meds, and far as we could figure she realized what she had done and tried to cover it up. Fucking bitch.

[Mabus]

23. They killed mine

She entered the hospital because she had inhaled some toxic chemicals (she walked into a house that was being bug bombed and inhaled a shitload of pesticide). While they were running tests they discovered she had cancer that had spread throughout her digestive system. It was kind of funny. At last mom found out why she had been having all those stomach aches. She had several surgeries to remove some of the cancer. It was too late to save her life but we were trying to make her comfortable. After the surgeries she was put on several types of medications and she developed both a bacterial infection and a viral one. They treated the viral one and the bacterial one spread. At that point she was dying of three things: the chemicals, the cancer and now a bacterial infection. She was in and out of comas for several months. Realistically we knew that mom wasn't going to live out the year. She was ready to go.

When she died we weren't surprised. The hospital notified my dad and sent her to the mortuary to be cremated. What the hospital didn't tell him at the time and what we didn't find out until after mom was cremated was that she died after she had been wheeled down to a dialysis treatment room and left. Why that was done was never explained to us. Nor were we able to find out who took and left her there or when it happened. She had been scheduled for minor surgery concerning her colostomy bag but there had never been any prior talk of using a dialysis machine in her treatment.

Like I said, realistically mom was dying. While we all feel that the hospital's incompetence hastened her death my dad's feeling was that mom was out of her misery and he wasn't strong enough to go through a court battle. We have family friends that went through a wrongful death lawsuit concerning the death of their son. It took years to settle and was emotionally draining. They told us they didn't feel like their son had been properly laid to rest until after the appeals were over and the case was settled. Dad said didn't go through that. He didn't want to re-live mom's death everyday especially in front of the grandkids. Besides, we really didn't have anything to go on. All we had was what we heard for the first 36 hours that mom was found in a dialysis treatment room. After that, the first day the stories varied or people couldn't remember. We had no statements in writing and when we asked people didn't remember anything. My mom had been cremated and the hospital was in control of the witnesses and the evidence.

[knitter4democracy]

24. Did you write her up?

I would've gone for her license and been roaming the administration offices until I got her re-trained at the least or fired at best.

And last night, a patient asked his nurse to call my hubby, and she did--at midnight when Hubby wasn't the one on-call. He was his regular doctor, though, and Hubby took the call. They discussed what the patient was concerned about, and Hubby went in extra-early this morning to check things out.

[EFerrari]

30. They did the same thing to my mother in law and were going to

perform BRAIN SURGERY because some 12 year old doctor didn't think to check HER DRIP. My sister in law and I had to argue with this guy forever just to get him to check the basics first. It was unflamingreal.

[barbtries]

44. jeez i hope you got her ass fired;

if not, you need to take this story to the people in charge at the hospital or maybe the local press. she WILL kill someone eventually at this rate. scary.

[smoogatz]

49. Ours (not as bad, but still):

The morning after the birth of our son, my wife was still woozy and tethered to the bed by catheter and various tubes, etc. I'd gone home (to my in-laws) to take a shower and a nap, having been up much of the night. This is in SoCal, the South Bay area if that means anything to anyone. I'm just lying down when my wife calls, in tears--the nurse has brought our new-infant son into the room, he's crying, my wife can't get to him, no one's answering the call button. Naturally, I jump back into the car and drive down there, hell-for-leather. I burst into the room, confront the nurse (who's about twenty), and she says my wife is being "hormonal." Now, this a semi-fancy private hospital, and all of the other nurses and staff have been primo, top-flight, super-professional, so we're used to a completely different standard by now. Turns out this particular nurse is an RN, a fill-in who was called in by the hospital because they were short-staffed that day. Turns out she is not aware (as the rest of the staff is) that my wife's mother is a well-known South Bay pediatrician who does rounds and on-call work at this very hospital--a woman of considerable reputation and ferocious, take-no-prisoners temper. Long story somewhat shorter--I called the m.i.l., she stormed up to the nurses' station, and within about ten minutes the snotty incompetent nurse had been fired and we had a very nice, extremely competent woman from the midwest taking care of us. I'm not sure there's a useful lesson to be learned from all this, except that good care starts with nursing staff, and if you're not happy it's good to speak up. Also, it doesn't hurt having a m.i.l. who can kick some medical ass.

[knitter4democracy]

25. I would've got bats*** crazy on all of them.

I took my college roommate to the local ER when we couldn't get her nosebleed to stop after over an hour (her nose had been cauterized as a kid, and somehow the scar broke on a dry day in winter when her allergies were bad). She sat in the waiting room for a good long while, and then they finally took her back. While waiting, I saw a guy who had a towel wrapped around his arm. I asked him how long he had been waiting. He told me an hour. I asked what was wrong, and he took the towel off, showing me a compound fracture with the bone sticking out. !!! I went through the "forbidden" doors, went to the nurses' desk (they hate that), asked them where my friend was and then told them about the guy in the waiting room. They rolled their eyes and said that they knew about him. I told them that he had a decent case for a lawsuit, given how fast infection can set in when the bone goes through the skin, and get this, they said that they hadn't known about that and ran out to get him.

The ER was mostly empty, and when I found my friend, she was shivering from the cold in a gown and still hadn't seen the doctor after over half an hour of waiting in a gown. The jerk finally shows up, looks at her nose, and tells her that it's mostly stopped and not to worry about it. I asked him if they were going to give her any saline or anything, and he said no. I was furious and got her out of there as soon as I could. We kept an eye on her all night, keeping her drinking plenty of Gatorade, and made sure she was okay.

Now that I'm married to a doctor, I just make sure the ER staff knows that I'm a b***** doctor's wife. They know what that means, and they're much nicer. My mom got admitted rather quickly when she had her episode a year and a half ago, and I was on their asses the whole time. I can be quite nasty when I need to be.

That husband needed a kick-ass patient advocate, and he shouldn't have needed one. It's the freakin' ER, for crying out loud! I hope he sues them and gets them to agree to changes in the ER staffing levels and staff itself.

[Sequoia]

26. Tragic Catch-911 for dying woman (June 12)

the 40 minutes before a woman's death last month at Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital, two separate callers pleaded with 911 dispatchers to send help because the hospital staff was ignoring her as she writhed on the floor, according to audio recordings of the calls.

"My wife is dying and the nurses don't want to help her out," Jose Prado, the woman's boyfriend, told the 911 dispatcher through an interpreter.

He was calling from a pay phone outside the hospital, his tone increasingly desperate as he described how his 43-year-old girlfriend was spitting up blood.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department dispatcher struggled to make sense of his predicament, then urged him to contact a doctor or nurse.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-calls13jun13,0,3172164.story?coll=la-home-local

I guess "Sick-O" will attract a lot of attenion after this horrible story. The Today Show did a segment but didn't really show much.

[Bunny]

29. Your link isn't working for me. Is there any possible way there could be more to this story?

I really can't believe the astounding lack of concern for human life as it's been described here. Could there be more that we don't know? I don't think that it would excuse anything, but it may help to fill in some blanks. :shrug:

On edit, never mind. I read your link in Post #26. Wow. There are no words to describe this. She was writhing on the floor, vomiting blood, and no one would look at her??? The janitor cleaned around her??? It's mind-boggling.

[Sequoia]

36. This story should be all over the place. Horrid treatment!

The attitude of the hospital staff and the dispatcher....jeez, even a android would more compassion.

[K8-EEE]

54. Remember the other L.A. hospital busted for "patient dumping?"

Hollywood Presbyterian dumped a quadrapalegic man with a dirty colostomy bag in the gutter at skidrow. Somebody got it on tape.

There is just a total breakdown not only in the healthcare system but society as well, that people give these kinds of orders and that othe people will follow them.

[proud2BlibKansan]

31. OMG how horrible

[jollyreaper2112]

34. Reminds me of a good joke about police inattentiveness

A guy sees a couple of thugs breaking into his barn. He calls up 911 and tells them so. "Sorry, we don't have any units nearby. Can't help you." He thanks them and hangs up. He calls back with a different story. "I just shot two guys who were breaking into my barn."

Five minutes later the cops come tearing in and arrest the burglers. The cop comes up to the guy and says "I thought you said these boys were shot." He nods. "Ayup. And I thought 911 said there weren't any cops available."

If I was the boyfriend I would have told 911 I was going out to my car to get my gun and would start shooting doctors until someone took care of her. You can bet the cops would be there inside a minute. I don't even have a gun and would be run in for making terroristic threats but at least she'd still be alive.

My mom is a nurse and had to put up with this same shit in her own fucking hospital. She broke her collar bone falling off her bike and I ran her up to the emergency room. Every bit of the way they handled it was ham-fisted and indifferent.

[LisaL]

57. Actually, the police showed up

and was taking her in (she had a warrant on her) when she died. So, what gives you an idea that if cops showed up she would still be alive, considering they did show up and she died?
She needed medical help, not police.

[Catherine Vincent]

38. This is outrageous.

No one should have to suffer and die that way.:(

[MsKandice01]

39. They don't call that place "Killer King" for nothing...

It's pretty much common knowledge in L.A. that if you're sick, the last place you want to go is King. The problem is that it's the only two county hospital in inner city Los Angeles and for those who are poor/uninsured, it's pretty much their only resort if they need to be seen quickly.

[AspenRose]

47. I'm sure MLK himself would not be pleased about such a place bearing

his name doing something so inhumane.

What a sad irony. :-(

[barbtries]

41. right here in LA

i believe some people should be seeing the inside of a jail cell. how callous can humans be? this callous...

[FloridaJudy]

46. I read about this earlier

They had a picture of the woman: she was extremely overweight and obviously Hispanic, two strikes against her. Many medical people tend to discriminate against the obese - sad but true. It is more difficult to care for really heavy patients - exams can be limited by layers of fat obscuring landmarks, and they're more physically challenging to care for - but I've also witnessed the attitude that obese clients' problems are all of their own making, and if they'd only "exercise a little self-control" they could cure themselves.

It's also possible that racism and/or a language barrier contributed to the neglect this poor woman endured, and there is no excuse for ignoring a patient lying on the ground and writhing in obvious pain! At the very least, someone on the staff should have tried to get a second opinion even if her first doctor insisted that there was nothing "really wrong" with her. As a nurse, I understand that many MD's have an over-inflated view of their importance, but it could have been possible to get her re-examined without bruising anyone's ego. "Gee, Doctor, I know she looked perfectly fine when you examined her, but she took a real turn for the worse after you left, so I asked if Dr. Garcia..."

[treestar]

48. Could this have been negligence rather than callousness?

People working in a hospital do have to triage, and if the doctor told them she was OK - also the doc could have been wrong, but aren't ER docs often overworked? This may be more of a systemic problem than just particular people being callous. The people "cleaning around her" aren't doctors and shouldn't touch her. And what else was going on in there? This might not have happened but for perhaps an unusual number of serious cases in one night.

[Solon]

56. Being busy is no excuse, to be frank, the behavior of the hospital staff is criminal. n/t

[smoogatz]

50. This has been posted before, but it's no less appalling

the second time around. Time to get rid of for-profit medicine in this country. Single payer is the only way.

[Sequoia]

52. The other poster was 2nd, this was first.

[smoogatz]

58. Saw it first a few weeks ago. n/t

[Sequoia]

61. Well, considering I only see this at work.....

I'm so behind it all I guess. Sigh....Why can't I ever be first! (Pout, cry)

[K8-EEE]

53. Freepers Think We Have The "Best Health Care In The World!"

Tell this lady about it....I'm sure across town at Cedar's or UCLA this wouldn't have happened, however, how many Angelinos have access to the top-notch hospitals?? MAYBE 35%, just a guess....

[Solon]

55. I don't want to see the ER doctors, nurses, or that fucking janitor out on the streets free...

Why the fuck aren't they in jail yet? This is negligent homicide or involuntary manslaughter at the very least. Charge them, convict them, and let them spend 20+ years in jail for this shit. Oh, and do the same to that snarky 911 operator as well.

[Stinky The Clown]

59. I can NOT imagine the feelings of the woman, her boyfriend, or others in that ER waiting room

If EVER justice called for prosecution, this is it. Callous is hardly a strong enough word to say it.

[RogueSpirit]

62. The hospital, and staff are defintely liable

In an operation the size of a hospital, you are going to have members of all parties, faiths, creed and color working there. I do not see this as a failure of a group, but rather a failure of procedure and rules set forth by that particular hospital.

Everyone has the ability to get treated at an ER, regardless of financial status, color, religion or even immigration status. laws are in place that state an ER treats first, questions later. It is clear that this hospital didn't follow these laws. There should be a tough investigation here. If the hospital use some type of loophole, then those loopholes should be reassessed.

/just my $0.02

[City67]

65. As to nationalized health care

I would be curious to see how many of the people that are advocating nationalized health care have lived with it. I have in several countries in europe and to say it sucks is being generous. The only positive thing I can think of about it is its free.