don't go to this hospital

[rainbabies]

Fury after woman dies in hospital lobby


LOS ANGELES - A woman who lay bleeding on the emergency room floor of a troubled inner-city hospital died after 911 dispatchers refused to contact paramedics or an ambulance to take her to another facility, newly released tapes of the emergency calls reveal.

Edith Isabel Rodriguez, 43, died of a perforated bowel on May 9 at Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital. Her death was ruled accidental by the Los Angeles County coroner’s office.

Relatives said Rodriguez was bleeding from the mouth and writhing in pain for 45 minutes while she was at a hospital waiting area. Experts have said she could have survived had she been treated early enough.

County and state authorities are now investigating Rodriguez’s death. Relatives reported she died as police were wheeling her out of the hospital after the officers they had asked to help Rodriguez arrested her instead on a parole violation. Sheriff’s Department spokesman Duane Allen said Wednesday that the investigation is ongoing.

In the recordings of two 911 calls that day, first obtained by the Los Angeles Times under a California Public Records Act request, callers pleaded for help for Rodriguez but were referred to hospital staff instead.

“I’m in the emergency room. My wife is dying and the nurses don’t want to help her out,” Rodriguez’s boyfriend, Jose Prado, is heard saying in Spanish through an interpreter on the tapes.

“What’s wrong with her?” a female dispatcher asked.

“She’s vomiting blood,” Prado said.

“OK, and why aren’t they helping her?” the dispatcher asked.

‘They’re just watching her’
“They’re watching her there and they’re not doing anything. They’re just watching her,” Prado said.

The dispatcher told Prado to contact a doctor and then said paramedics wouldn’t pick her up because she was already in a hospital. She later told him to contact county police officers at a security desk.

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.

“She’s definitely sick and there’s a guy that’s ignoring her,” the woman told a male dispatcher.

During the call, the dispatcher argued with the woman over whether there really was an emergency.

“I cannot do anything for you for the quality of the hospital. ... It is not an emergency. It is not an emergency ma’am,” he said.

“You’re not here to see how they’re treating her,” the woman replied.

The dispatcher refused to call paramedics and told the woman that she should contact hospital supervisors “and let them know” if she is unhappy.

‘May God strike you too’
“May God strike you too for acting the way you just acted,” the woman said finally.

“No, negative ma’am, you’re the one,” he said.

The incident was the latest high-profile lapse at King-Harbor, formerly known as King/Drew. The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors is investigating claims of recent patient care breakdowns, including Rodriguez’s case.

Federal inspectors last week said emergency room patients were in “immediate jeopardy” of harm or death, and King-Harbor was given 23 days to shape up or risk losing federal funding.

‘Fundamentally a failure of caring’
Dr. Bruce Chernof, director of the county Department of Health Services, which oversees the facility, has called Rodriguez’s death “inexcusable” and said it was “important to understand that this was fundamentally a failure of caring.” He has said conditions are improving, though.

A call Wednesday seeking comment about the 911 tapes from the department’s communications office, which handles information about the hospital, was not immediately returned.

Dr. Roger Peeks, the chief medical officer at the hospital, was placed on “ordered absence” Monday, the Times reported. Health officials declined to elaborate, saying it was a personnel matter. Dr. Robert Splawn, chief medical officer for the health department, was named interim chief medical officer, the newspaper said.

I didn't read the article, but I guessed which hospital it was. In the sdn archives there are stories about this hospital. I believe their residency program was pulled about a year ago, but the stories were pretty wild.

Yikes! I thought the plan was to completely shut down MLK? I guess that didn't happen. :huh:

King-Drew is a bad, bad place. DH worked at the other county hospital in that area and said that most CHP/LAPD officers had "DO NOT TAKE TO KING-DREW" written across their bullet proof vests.

[rainbabies]

holy crap. that is just sooo wrong. the fact that this place has been know to be so shitty, for so long....ug. discusting.

I also assumed it was King-Drew & was confused when the article said King Harbor. It's infamous. It's in Compton, I believe.

Just hidieous.

[PrincessFiona]

:thud:

Truly.....that is just horrific.....

I hope they shut the entire place down...for the sake of the patients.

Not to start a debate or anything but was this one of the hospitals that also treats people without health insurance....hence our argument that they can get equal care w/o insurance?

Just wondering... :>

kris

I'm sure it's a hospital that treats the indigent. People who had ANY choice would never go there.

[poky]

Wow. One would think even a frequent flyer (assuming she was one) would get treatment if they're doing something like vomiting blood.

I'd be interested to know what the dispatcher's excuse is for getting belligerant. That's just wrong. Especially on a second call for the same thing.

I vaguely recall seeing a "Trauma: Life in the ER" that was filmed at King/Drew. Don't think they managed to film anything like that, though.

King-Drew is a bad, bad place. DH worked at the other county hospital in that area and said that most CHP/LAPD officers had "DO NOT TAKE TO KING-DREW" written across their bullet proof vests.

The police officer assigned to the inner-city school where I taught told us that Nashville's cops write on their bullet-proof vests "Take Me To Vanderbilt" (where DH works) I had never heard of such before that!

Given the reputation at King-Drew, I wonder what made this lady or her relatives go there in the first place. :huh: I thought that no ER could turn you away because of lack of insurance.

Given the reputation at King-Drew, I wonder what made this lady or her relatives go there in the first place. :huh: I thought that no ER could turn you away because of lack of insurance.

I'm quite sure that would be a lack of choice. It's what is there. Compton is not particularly close to anything else, and when you're scared, you go to what is closest (especially if you don't know any better).

[Cumberland]

I wonder what the triage nurse was doing, or what the hospital security was doing. I worked in the ER for a long time, and if a patient called 911 from the hospital, I would expect dispatch to tell them, 'you are already at the place where help is-go get the triage nurse, go get security, go get a patient representative'. In a troubled place like inner city LA, the dispatcher has to use the ambulances for the most lifethreatening cases first, and picking someone up from one hospital to take them to a different one is not medically necessary unless ordered by a physician ( or nurse practitioner



Had they already been seen and been refused care? Why were they arguing with 911 dispatch and not the staff at the hospital? I just read some articles on it and it is very vague-they articles focus on the 911 call rather than what the staff at the hospital were doing.

When I worked at a crazy Level I ER, there were times when we would have four traumas all at once, someone who was able to walk but was vomiting blood might just have to wait. She might have come in and was stable, had vital signs taken, and been put in the waiting room where she rapidly deterioriated.

I guess I feel like there is not enough information to really know the whole story, but the fact that a life was lost is a very terrible thing.

[diggitydot]

Here are some new details about this...

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/06/23/troubl ... index.html

Regulators may close troubled inner city hospital
POSTED: 7:30 p.m. EDT, June 23, 2007

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- When Edith Isabel Rodriguez showed up in the emergency room of an inner-city hospital last month complaining of severe stomach pain, the staff was already familiar with her.

It was at least her third visit to Los Angeles County's public Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital in as many days. "You have already been seen, and there is nothing we can do," a nurse told her.

Minutes later, the 43-year-old mother of three collapsed on the floor screaming in pain and began vomiting blood. Employees ignored her, and she was soon dead.

Now state and federal regulators are threatening to close the hospital or pull its funding unless it can be improved, and Rodriguez has become a symbol of everything wrong with the facility derisively known as "Killer King." (Watch 911 calls go unheeded Video )

After she collapsed, surveillance cameras show that Rodriguez was left for dead on the floor.

Nurses walked past her. A janitor cleaned up around her. No one did anything until police were called to cart her away. They didn't get far before she went into cardiac arrest and died.

"This needs to stop," state Health Services Director Sandra Shewry said Thursday as the agency moved to revoke the hospital's license. "We're doing this in response to the egregious incidents that have come to light in the last six weeks."

The hospital, formerly known as Martin Luther King Jr.-Drew Medical Center, was built after the 1965 Watts riot to bring health care to poor, minority communities in south Los Angeles.

But it had been plagued by patient deaths blamed on sloppy nursing care, among other things. The county attempted over the last few years to correct the problems with a multimillion dollar rescue effort, disciplining workers, reorganizing management, closing the trauma unit and reducing the number of beds from 200 to 48.
Brain tumor patient waits 4 days in ER

After Rodriguez's death, federal reports showed those efforts were failing and patients were in "immediate jeopardy." Of the 60 cases reviewed between February and June, more than a quarter received substandard care, according to the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

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. A pregnant woman who complained of bleeding was given a pregnancy test and left, only to return three days later and have a miscarriage after waiting more than four hours to see a doctor.

The findings have sent county officials scrambling to improve care before a federal inspection due by August 15 that could determine whether the hospital keeps its federal funding. The county might close the facility without that money.

The hospital, meanwhile, could contest the state allegations in a hearing before a Department of Health Services administrative law judge.
'Losing hope'

"I'm losing hope," Zev Yaroslavsky, member of the county Board of Supervisors that oversees King-Harbor, told hospital managers earlier this week. "We need to be prepared for the worst-case scenario."

On Friday, the county's Department of Health Services released a contingency plan to deal with closing hospital departments and relocating patients if they must. The plan, which also lays out how the hospital could eventually be reopened if a private partner is found, will be presented to the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday, said Bruce Chernof, director of the department.

Even though hospitals nationwide struggle with too many patients and not enough staff, the scope and severity of King-Harbor's problems are rare.

"Most hospitals in America have long waits, they have crowded ERs," said Dr. Bruce Siegel, former chief of New York City's public hospitals and a George Washington University professor. "But they don't let people die in the waiting room after they call 911. This is a whole new level here."
Doctors insisted Rodriguez had gallstones

Rodriguez, who struggled with drug addiction over the years, had visited King-Harbor several times for stomach pain in the days before she died. Each time, she was sent home, in some cases with pain medication, after doctors said she suffered from gallstones.

"They discharged me, but I don't feel good. I feel sick," she told her sister, Marcela Sanchez.

At the urging of her sister, Rodriguez returned to the hospital.

Early on May 9, she was wheeled into the ER by county police officers.

"Thanks a lot, officers, she's a regular here," a nurse said. "She has already been seen and was discharged."

After the nurse again refused to help, Rodriguez slid off her wheelchair and onto her knees in a fetal position, screaming in pain, according to a federal report based in part on surveillance videotape.
Calling 911 from the hospital

Over the next half hour, hospital staff walked past her. Soon, her boyfriend, Jose Prado, who had left for about an hour, returned to the hospital.

"When I came back, I found her lying on the floor with blood coming out of her mouth," Prado said. "She said, 'Honey, help me! Nobody will help me here!"'

He pleaded with medical staff and then a county police sergeant to intervene, but no one did.

"I told him she had blood in her mouth," Prado says he told the sergeant. "But he told me, 'Don't worry, she just has chocolate in her mouth.'"

Then he called 911.

"My wife is dying and the nurses don't want to help her out," he said in Spanish through an interpreter

"What's wrong with her?" a dispatcher asked.

"She's vomiting blood," Prado said.
'I just hugged her'

When the dispatcher refused assistance, he hung up and frantically ran back to Rodriguez.

"I just hugged her. I didn't know what else to do. I couldn't think of anything else," he said.

Eventually, officers arrested her on a parole violation.

Police wheeled her out of the ER, then returned minutes later after Rodriguez's heart had stopped. Autopsy results revealed she died of a perforated bowel that probably developed in the previous 24 hours, a condition that is often treatable if caught early enough.

"They took her outside to die like an animal," Prado said.

After her death, a triage nurse was put on leave, resigned and was reported to the state Nursing Board for investigation. Six others -- a nurse, two nursing assistants, and three hospital finance workers -- were disciplined. Sheriff's detectives, meanwhile, have opened a homicide investigation.

Rodriguez's family said little will ease their grief. They plan to sue and are seeking copies of the video surveillance tapes, which are being held as part of a criminal investigation.

"They took my sister," Sanchez said. "It wasn't time for her to go."

You have to imagine that those people didn't go into medicine with that outlook.

How horrible.

Nothing excuses the actions (or in-action) in this case. But you have to wonder what kind of crap they've seen or experienced that moved them from person interested in caretaking to person who would leave a woman dying on a floor.

The hospital should probably be closed - but where will those people go?

Wow, that's really unbelievable. Regardless of her history with the hospital, that's a terribly sad way for her to be treated when she was lying there dying.