Woman dies in waiting room - King Hospital, Brooklyn

[rainbabies]

very disturbing. but not unusual for king county. that is a bad, bad hospital. most of the med students that are enrolled in the same school dh attended rotate through there. scary stuff, my friend. scary stuff.
(patients call 911 on a regular basis from their rooms for help. seems there isn't any help that exists inside the hospital. there are so many horror stories from that shit hole)

[DCJenn]

Re: Woman dies in waiting room - King Hospital, Brooklyn

Sadly, this is an example of what the lack of a cohesive health care system can do. Scary for everyone there.

Jenn

[Vishenka69]

Re: Woman dies in waiting room - King Hospital, Brooklyn

very disturbing. but not unusual for king county. that is a bad, bad hospital. most of the med students that are enrolled in the same school dh attended rotate through there. scary stuff, my friend. scary stuff.
(patients call 911 on a regular basis from their rooms for help. seems there isn't any help that exists inside the hospital. there are so many horror stories from that shit hole)

What she said. City hospitals in Brooklyn are notorious for such behavior. Most of the staff are foreign docs, who couldn't get a spot elsewhere and the nursing staff is the worse. If any of your happen to find yourselves in Brooklyn and feel sick, get the hell out of the borough before calling 911.

[Rapunzel]

Re: Woman dies in waiting room - King Hospital, Brooklyn

Sadly, this is an example of what the lack of a cohesive health care system can do. Scary for everyone there.

Actually, this is exactly the type of care we can expect with a truly "socialized" system of healthcare: The lowest common denominator will rule. I'd rather not have all of our hospitals be like King Hospital.

[DCJenn]

Re: Woman dies in waiting room - King Hospital, Brooklyn

Right.

Happy 4th!

J.

Re: Woman dies in waiting room - King Hospital, Brooklyn

Sadly, this is an example of what the lack of a cohesive health care system can do. Scary for everyone there.

Actually, this is exactly the type of care we can expect with a truly "socialized" system of healthcare: The lowest common denominator will rule. I'd rather not have all of our hospitals be like King Hospital.

Yeah - you hear about this kind of thing happening all the time in Europe and Canada ... Not exactly.

[rainbabies]

Re: Woman dies in waiting room - King Hospital, Brooklyn

Right.

Happy 4th!

J.

[Cumberland]

Re: Woman dies in waiting room - King Hospital, Brooklyn

I worked in a level I trauma center ER (Brookdale Hospital Medical Center) in Brooklyn about a mile or so from Kings County . It was really like being in a war zone. I cant even begin to describe the things I saw there. We had ten security guards assigned to just the ER. There were times in the peds ER that a large group of parents would be banging on the door screaming and yelling to get in and multiple security guards had to go use physical restraint to get them to calm down. I was assaulted more than once. My colleagues jokingly called me 'f-ing white bitch' bc that was what patients called me daily.

The place was so overwhelming understaffed and overwhelmed with patients that people regularly waited over 24 hours. It was very common for people to lay around on the floor of the waiting room, so common in fact that nurses would not always go check on them- homeless people looking for a place to sleep, mentally ill people, people who needed a nap bc they waited so long. There were surveilllance cameras everywhere but NO staff to watch them- no money to pay the staff.

The issues with lack of insurance, medicaid, culture, and personal responsibility were unimaginable. Ambulances came in constantly all day with people with a common cold who didnt want to pay bus fare to get to the ER ( much less see their medicaid assigned PCP) so they would call 911, the ambulance was required by law to transport them, the triage nurse would send them to the waiting room where they would walk over to the McDonalds, eat a combo meal and wait til 2am to get an rx for OTC Robitussin.

From my experience the whole health system in NYC was so broken and just wrong, the staff of hospitals like Kings County have more to handle than is humanly possible on a budget that cant cover bare necessities. At Brookdale, the linen cart would be empty halfway through the day, and that was it. The bathrooms would be overflowing and disgusting constantly. Ten lunch trays would come for fifty patients. Physicians and NPs who had a new patient would assess them, order tests in the computer, draw their own blood, start the IV, wheel them to xray, pick them up from xray, call the transport to pick them up and take them home, all basic technician responsibilities bc the were no other staff to do it or if there were, it would take hours and hours to be completed. My first day of work, first day of working as an NP ever I sutured three pediatric facial lacerations with no supervision- my first time suturing anything other than a pigs foot! Anywhere else a plastic surgeon would be called, there you wouldnt even be able to get them to step foot in the door.

I know this is really long but I just really wanted to emphasize that the conditions there are like a third world country. It boils down to money, which there is none- not on the part of the hospital or the patients.

[migirl]

Re: Woman dies in waiting room - King Hospital, Brooklyn

Wow, that is amazing. Thanks for the insight, Cumberland. I honestly had no idea.

[DCJenn]

Re: Woman dies in waiting room - King Hospital, Brooklyn

We somehow need to fix the primary care system. I have plenty of clients who don't qualify for medicaid so when they do get sick-whether it's allergies or a broken arm or a heart attack- the place they turn to is the ER. We all know that the ER is probably not the best place to go if you have a minor illness.

We have done a pretty good job here in SA of moving the drunks and druggies out of the ER- we take them to our sobering unit. The police pick them up and rather than process them through the court & take them to jail or to the hospital, we take them.

My point was that it's going to take a health care POLICY to address these issues- they're not going away and they're not getting better. I never mentioned socialized medicine. I said "Cohesive Health System". As in one that makes sense. Why everyone immediately thinks that means socialized medicine is beyond me.

However, nearly every public hospital in the country to a certain extent functions like that particular hospital. It's broken, it needs to be fixed. How it gets fixed? It'll take more than one person, one party, one idea. Different things will work in different parts of the country. Different health care needs based on things like average age of the population in that particular area, etc.

We have to figure out how to provide health care to the indigent population because Lily's husband is right- there are plenty of people whose healthcare costs are paid for by our tax dollars. and bankrupting the system. Part of our goal for our heroin moms is to get them off heroin and onto methadone because it's a longer but much more predictable detox for the infant. I have had poly-substance moms have poly-substance babies who take 90+ days to detox in the NICU- all paid for by our tax dollars. and then CPS comes in (rightfully) and that baby is removed and placed in foster care (our tax dollars) etc, etc.

So, rather than immediately jump on the 'socialized medicine' blather, I think we- as a society- need to put on our big boy and girl panties (just like with the energy situation), and realize that there's no one 'right answer'. None of the answers are going to please everyone. Oh well. We have a broken system. It's not working. Let's figure out a way to make it work.

J.

[DCJenn]

Re: Woman dies in waiting room - King Hospital, Brooklyn

Cohesive health POLICY- not system.

I have no idea what the system looks like, smells like or how it would function. But we need to create a cohesive set of health POLICIES in order to get there.

Things that make the most sense, because not everyone is going to 'win'. But right now, everyone is losing.

Jenn

[Auspicious]

Re: Woman dies in waiting room - King Hospital, Brooklyn

Speaking of Brooklyn hospitals, there's a book review and excerpt in the NYT of a new book about Maimo, for those interested:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/06/books ... ref=slogin

[Tenacious_D]

Re: Woman dies in waiting room - King Hospital, Brooklyn

I just had to chime in because I lived in Brooklyn for most of my youth and was born in Brookdale....the things I remember seeing in that ER when we had to go was incredible... I was ~10 and remember a man coming out of surgery with his arm open and blood and veins and muscles hanging out all over the place while he tried to use a payphone to get a ride Brooklyn hospitals are rough...I would always wait to cross the bridge to get help.

I worked in a level I trauma center ER (Brookdale Hospital Medical Center) in Brooklyn about a mile or so from Kings County . It was really like being in a war zone. I cant even begin to describe the things I saw there. We had ten security guards assigned to just the ER. There were times in the peds ER that a large group of parents would be banging on the door screaming and yelling to get in and multiple security guards had to go use physical restraint to get them to calm down. I was assaulted more than once. My colleagues jokingly called me 'f-ing white bitch' bc that was what patients called me daily.

The place was so overwhelming understaffed and overwhelmed with patients that people regularly waited over 24 hours. It was very common for people to lay around on the floor of the waiting room, so common in fact that nurses would not always go check on them- homeless people looking for a place to sleep, mentally ill people, people who needed a nap bc they waited so long. There were surveilllance cameras everywhere but NO staff to watch them- no money to pay the staff.

The issues with lack of insurance, medicaid, culture, and personal responsibility were unimaginable. Ambulances came in constantly all day with people with a common cold who didnt want to pay bus fare to get to the ER ( much less see their medicaid assigned PCP) so they would call 911, the ambulance was required by law to transport them, the triage nurse would send them to the waiting room where they would walk over to the McDonalds, eat a combo meal and wait til 2am to get an rx for OTC Robitussin.

From my experience the whole health system in NYC was so broken and just wrong, the staff of hospitals like Kings County have more to handle than is humanly possible on a budget that cant cover bare necessities. At Brookdale, the linen cart would be empty halfway through the day, and that was it. The bathrooms would be overflowing and disgusting constantly. Ten lunch trays would come for fifty patients. Physicians and NPs who had a new patient would assess them, order tests in the computer, draw their own blood, start the IV, wheel them to xray, pick them up from xray, call the transport to pick them up and take them home, all basic technician responsibilities bc the were no other staff to do it or if there were, it would take hours and hours to be completed. My first day of work, first day of working as an NP ever I sutured three pediatric facial lacerations with no supervision- my first time suturing anything other than a pigs foot! Anywhere else a plastic surgeon would be called, there you wouldnt even be able to get them to step foot in the door.

I know this is really long but I just really wanted to emphasize that the conditions there are like a third world country. It boils down to money, which there is none- not on the part of the hospital or the patients.