We have yet another citizen left to die in a waiting room in the United States. Witnesses say that a man was left for 16 hours to sit in the emergency room in the University Hospital in San Antonio until other patients informed the nurse that he had stopped breathing.
We have seen a steady line of these cases, but legislators have done virtually nothing to deter such neglect in our system. The average wait is now six hours in an emergency room in the United States, a disgraceful record for a developed nation. These neglect cases are now becoming routine (here and here)
What is interesting is that hospitals now use HIPAA as an excuse not to respond to questions over neglect, insisting in this case that they are protecting the privacy of the man who was allegedly allowed to die without any care in their emergency room.
found on Reddit.
Jonathan Turley
Taliban Tootie:
ROTFLMMFAO!! That post is just PRECIOUS!! Thanks for the laugh, Taliban!!!!
HenMan and Stam:
They won’t die if you bigoted, racist, brown-supremacist, Christophobic, hate-mongers on the left would open and run hospitals for them. Instead, you feckless bums insist others do it (at gunpoint) while you then pretend you are the compassionate ones.
You are both lazy and shiftless hypocrites who demand others do what YOU refuse to do then make monsters out of people who have already probably done more than you will ever do to relieve suffering.
And the people I was referring to were coming to the hospital and jamming up the works were doing so with COLDS AND FLU, not heart attacks or car crashes.
Ricardo Cabeza-
Welcome back! Hope your cousin, Richard Cranium will also join us again.
“The reason for much of the problem (outside of bad management) is government tampering by forcing hospitals to care for everyone. With the biggest flood in the ER often coming from non-emergency care (flu, colds, stomach aches)of illegals who use the ER as a doctors office. If these people weren’t crying wolf and occupying services which the rest of us get through our doctors, the patients with real problems would be safer.”
I agree. They should die on the side of the road instead of mussing the floor of the ER. Healthcare, schmealthcare – who cares if they can’t afford insurance? Let the f**kers die.
Watch it Taliban Tootie, your “compassion” is showing.
Tootie-
That’s right, Tootie. Let the wetbacks die so they won’t inconvenience you. Then give them one of your nice Christian funerals. And don’t forget to bill the family for the flowers and the organist. And, Tootie, may God have mercy on your twisted soul.
Marnie:
I don’t think the issue was about releasing info to the press or the need of the press to know. I think you misunderstand what is going on here.
A person who doesn’t have directives for hospital treatment BEFORE they go to the hospital isn’t going to be able to have family members discuss the patients problems with medical staff.
This is the law.
And this is how HIPPA slows down medical care and can cause death.
Doctors have to run lengthy and time consuming tests in order to glean information from the persons condition since (especially with an unconscious patient) no one who knows the patient (not even a spouse) can speak to medical staff if that person is not authorized to speak on the behalf of the patient. (as HIPPA stipulates).
If a husband abuses his wife and the husband is yapping at the staff all the time, the wife is not going to have her needs met. HIPPA protects the wife or the child of abusive parents. But it can slow up the processes for loving family members or friends who are NOT AUTHORIZED to speak with staff.
To avoid this EVERYONE needs to carry or possess a notarized document (directive) stating who staff, doctors, and emergency personnel may discuss medical history and procedures with. A good idea is to put directive documents in the glove box of your car with the registration and insurance information. Or if you don’t drive, make sure a loved one or friend has a copy or two or three, or ten, or twenty. Or however many people you would like to help you out during times when you are not able to help yourself.
DO IT NOW.
In some cities hospitals run their current wait time for ER services on bill boards along side the highway. And you can go to many hospital websites and see a wait time clock (that changes as you watch it).
The reason for much of the problem (outside of bad management) is government tampering by forcing hospitals to care for everyone. With the biggest flood in the ER often coming from non-emergency care (flu, colds, stomach aches)of illegals who use the ER as a doctors office. If these people weren’t crying wolf and occupying services which the rest of us get through our doctors, the patients with real problems would be safer.
You would think some rich leftists would have started up a hospital corporation to deal with these poor people and prove to us what compassionate people can do while running a hospital. But no not the criminally leftist/progressive/liberal. Instead they just stick a gun in someone elses face and tell them to help the poor.
It is impossible to know how many people will flock to a hospital ER on any given night. Better procedures surely need to be in place for when this happens, but it cannot always go smoothly. Getting the government involved any further will not help matters. It will get worse.
Murder is already a crime and thus there are enough laws to deal with this.
HIPAA is probably not the issue except to nosy news outlets and busybodies, which is the point of HIPAA.
That act does not protect the hospital from investigation by law enforcement, state and federal regulatory agencies or law suits.
I worked in a hospital that was under investigation by the State’s hospital regulatory agency, city, county and state police, JCAHO the national hospital accrediting agency, Medicaid and the FBI, but HIPAA still applied.
The public had no “need to know” the patient’s name or medical condition, all those agencies I mentioned did have a “need to know.”
The family released the patient’s name and medical condition but the hospital and all its employees were legally bound by HIPAA not to discuss the matter with the public, not to discuss it among ourselves and not to access that patient’s records.
I know you are curious, the patient signed a release form walked out of the hospital and died.
No matter how respected this hospital is, there is no excuse for not caring for someone for 16 hours! I have waited for 3-4 hours in an emergency room with my daughter who broke her wrist, but 16 hours is reprehensible. frank and Mike S. hit it on the head when they said that America should follow suit with the rest of the developed world and provide adequate health care for all. However, I am not holding my breath on that happening soon. We have to keep the Pentagon filled with weapons that even they don’t want before we can provide health care for all.
This happened in New York and was caught on video,probably the same could be said about the incident in San Antonio:
Ricardo,
I think you may have hit one of many possible bulls-eyes.
It certainly is a National Shame.
Tho women are not treated better than this man, poor white men are not treated better. Many children are not treated better.
And there are many in healthcare who cannot afford healthcare.
A National Shame that has the whole world calling us hypocrite and a few elite bastards saying back…”so what”.
@Swarthmore Mom: I can attest that waits (with insurance) at respected private hospitals can be 6-8 hours. the problem is far more widespread than just public facilities.
Well, he was probably Mexican, right? I mean, they wouldn’t let a white man die like that, right?
Having had my first heart attack in 1982 and blessed with good health insurance, since 1982 I have little problem getting fast treatment in ER’s. I know for a fact though, that even in the best hospital ER’s, the wait for people without specific undiagnosed ailments, but specific complaints is long. Then too health insurance is a big factor. While given my infirmities I have been very lucky with my healthcare, for many that is not the case. One mark of an enlightened society should be adequate health care for all. The US has failed for many years in this regard and blockage of universal health care
has been accomplished by those with above average health care and those who political leanings exclude empathy for those less fortunate than themselves.
HEY! They said everyone can get medical care in the US by going to the emergency room – they never said it would be GOOD care!
The US stands alone in the industrial world (and large parts of the non-industrialized world) by not providing affordable, safe health care for its citizens. Somehow we are to believe that we are the richest country in the world but we can’t afford do as well as backwaters like Cuba, Bulgaria or Albania.
Striped of a safety net for the poor and crushing the middle class so as to create more poor in a nation of some 200 million guns, 65 million handguns is a dangerous thing but it is merely a matter of time since nobody seems interested in reversing course.
This is related on a those at the bottom and also in the middle are getting shafted no matter what,A parallel subject IMHO.
UNKIND CUTS
Obama’s Proposed Budget Cuts To Target Working Poor, Middle Class
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/13/obama-budget-proposal-cut_n_822689.html
Not only are legislators not doing anything to eliminate the problem, many are making it worse by enacting medical malpractice reform statutes to make it more difficult for injured people to bring claims against hospitals for injuries caused by emergency room care.
This hospital is recognized as one of the best hospitals in the country by US news and World Report. It is a public hospital that is a high level trauma center. The publicly funded university hospital ER’s are extremely overcrowded in Texas with uninsured people. If you go to a private hospital with insurance, the waits are not that long. The state has a burgeoning population of immigrants that are uninsured and many times they are not citizens. It is a disaster that is going to get worse as the republicans cut SCHIP and medicaid.
What can one say…I hope it gets better…but considering funding is being cut….I hope things get better…