Scuttlebutt Pipeline

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Do you ever get the feeling that your doctor and physicians don’t care about you or see you as merely another source of income and nothing more? Have you ever felt forgotten or mistreated by them? Well rest assured, your fears are probably legitimate.

What, you thought I was going to be reassuring you that they do care? Pft! Check this out:

A cancer patient says she was left alone in a CT scanner for hours after a technician apparently forget about her, and she finally crawled out of the device, only to find herself locked in the closed clinic.

A technician placed her inside the large machine at about 4 p.m. on Sept. 19, dimmed the lights so she could relax and told her not to move during the 25-minute procedure.

“At some point, my mom lost track of time and felt like too much time had passed, but she couldn’t look at a clock or anything because it was dark,” her son Ariel Tellez said.

After calling out, then screaming for help, she said, she spent several hours trying to free herself from the machine. Finally, she wiggled out from under a heavy blanket and out of the machine. By the time deputies found her, it had been five hours since she was placed inside.

read full article

You’ve got to love the fact that the office that this happened at is now going to institute a lockup procedure, whereby all employees will have a checklist of things to check on and secure before leaving to insure a full sweep of the premises is conducted in order to prevent another occurrence.

Hey that sounds like an excellent idea!

But wait, if gas stations, business offices, and what not already check to make sure everyone is gone and things tidying up before closing for the evening then why wasn’t a medical practice doing the same?

As more and more details are uncovered and leaked to the press the more and more I find myself disgusted with the hospital care in general and Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital.

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.

Full article.

I understand that there are procedures and protocols to follow but there is always a clause, it’s called emergency/extenuating circumstances. In order to protect a life or the wellbeing of someone(s) you need to act beyond the protocol. There is a lot of finger pointing being down right now and the blame is most certainly very widespread. No doubt many are in denial as to who really is at fault here but one thing remains unchanged; a woman lost her life when she could have been treated and would have survived. Her death was completely unnecessary.