July 1st, 2008
Patient Dies – Hospital Lies
Dear candidates for President of the United States of America, it’s great you are going to Iraq and Columbia. Consider a brief detour to hospitals in this country where the not so fortunate members of the nation you want to preside over must go to seek care.
What a sad world we live in. I’m not talking about a world full of genocide, the starving babies of third world countries, or the prisons in Thailand. I’m talking about institutions in the United States of America meant to serve the ill and needy. I say institution(s) so you don’t assume the one cited in the rest of this story is the only one. You and I can no longer be that naive.
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In Maryland if you are financially sound Shepard Pratt has a great mental health facility, “The Retreat at Shepard Pratt“, they of course are non participatory in insurance, but for 1800 dollars a day – even if you are batshit crazy – you are going to be treated like royalty. I’m certain we can find similar facilities all over the nation.
Others are not so fortunate.
A 49 year old women, Esmin Green, died in the ER of Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn. She was a victim of negligent homicide. You see, if you’re poor and crazy people can ignore you, even at places which are theoretically there to help you. The hospital will also feel justified in falsifying records, writing “patient awake and alert, walking to the bathroom” (paraphrase of noted falsified records), when the patient is lying on the chair or floor unconscious, perhaps already dead.
Kings County Hospital, from a three click scroll, tends to ignore people every now and again. In 1991 they did not pay enough attention “to a suicidal patient who escaped her restraints and jumped from a sixth-story window”. Last year they were sued for Inhumane Treatment. This is the pdf of the complaint filed last year against New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation.
No doubt if you are ill, especially mentally ill, have no money, and no advocate in the way of family or friends, you are sunk. In this case the end result was death. I have to wonder how many more of these occur throughout this country on any given day. Deaths covered up by hospital notes, unquestioned deaths not caught on videotape.
How dare people who work in an institution meant to help and heal allow something like this to happen. How dare those who run this facility allow these conditions to persist. How dare the conditions at this facility be ignored for so long.
What baleful specimens of humanity would allow such to happen to another human being?
We’ve seen the enemy…………..
