Patient's death jeopardizes hospital | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle

Patient's death jeopardizes hospital.
Let's see...a woman goes into an Emergency Room complaining of severe stomache and abdominal pains. Is given pain killers and told to go home. The next day, the pain is worse, so she goes back to the ER, and is given more pain killers and told to go home. The third day, the pain is so bad that she can barely stand up, calls 911, is wheeled into the ER by a police officer, where she is then totally ignored by the nursing staff. Then, said patient falls onto the floor from the wheelchair in such intense pain that she is curled into a fetal position and is vomiting blood. Her husband shows up, pleads with the hospital staff to help his wife, and they refuse. So he runs and calls 911 (FROM THE HOSPITAL), and they refuse to help. So the husband runs back into the ER to try everything he could to comfort his wife, still laying in a pool of her own vomited blood on the ER floor. Finally, officers come into the ER, not to help her, but to arrest her for a parole violation. They put her back into the wheelchair and wheeled her out of the ER, only to return minutes later after the woman went into cardiac arrest and died. The cause of death? Perforated Bowel. A condition that is 100% treatable when it is caught early enough. And ALL of this is captured on the hospital's surveilance cameras.

Here's the kicker....this did not happen in some 3rd world nation. It did not happen in some over-crowded impoverished area where millions are literally living in the sewers of the orient. This happened in Los Angeles, California, USA. That's right. Good old US of A. The same nation that can turn a welfare mother of 4 into a multi-millionare overnight with the selection of only 1 lottery number, and the same country that is home to over 500,000 homeless people. The nation of the free. The home of the brave. Well DUH! You've gotta be brave if you're going to make it in this country. I mean c'mon, leaving a woman in her death throes lying in a pool of her own blood on the floor of an emergency room!? You've got to be freaking kidding me!!

The USA is a nation that can drop millions (not thousands - MILLIONS) of tons of food and water into impoverished nations.... and yet we have half a million hungry homeless people dumpster diving for peach pits and left over bits of hamburgers and hot dogs. A nation that uses BILLIONS of dollars to help other impoverished nations, and we can't even help the farmers in our nation....who are the very same ones that put fresh produce on our tables, not just here, but around the globe.
I don't care what hospital you go to in ANY other major city in this nation. Your wait might be long, but if you are in THAT kind of trauma, or have ANY condition that might take your life... you are treated properly and immediately. Apparently this does not apply at the Martin Luther King Jr. Harbor Hospital in inner LA. I also find it morbidly ironic that this hospital is named after a man that preached nothing but peace and love, who was assassinated by a derranged madman. This is a hospital that closed its trauma unit and reduced the number of beds from 200 to 48...in an effort to 'rescue' the hospital from being stripped of its license.

Excuse me, but does this not sound vaguely backwards to you? If I'm understanding this in the manner it was written, when you try and better the care given to patients at a hospital, isn't the idea to EXPAND and INCREASE the care potential? ADD good doctors and nurses maybe? Get updated and new equipment that will help diagnose and treat ailments properly? I know, maybe well, ADD MORE BEDS so more people can be properly treated? This hospital was given a multi (MULTI) million dollar fund. What did they do? Paint the walls and call it a day? I mean really! Leaving a woman to die in a pool of her own blood on the floor of an emergency room?!? And, not only that, but being forced back into a wheelchair so she can be arrested for a parole violation?!

Not only do I hope this woman's family sues the pants off of this hospital, but I hope that the state of California sues this hospital. I hope this hospital goes under EXTREME investigation by not only the FEDERAL government, but every single medical group on the face of this planet. This is not a hospital. It's a death hotel.

Yet another group of people that need to have the CDC classify their brain capacities as a class 4 biohazard.....