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They let a 17 year old die because they didn't have enough money? In many other countries this would be criminally culpable but in the US they aren't even goin

They let a 17 year old die because they didn't have enough money? In many other countries this would be criminally culpable but in the US they aren't even going to release the name of the "urgent care" clinic. Immoral. And don't even come to me with "well its complicated." No it isn't at all complicated. The kid didn't have money so they turned him out on the street, without even a safety evaluation, and he died before he could get care elsewhere. There's nothing complicated about that, you're pretending it is complicated to avoid the moral and ethical implications of what actually happened. People pretending like no medical triage, because he lacked means, is perfectly fine and that it was actually the [medically unqualified] victim's fault for not self-diagnosing well enough to go to the correct facility are apologists of the worst kind. It defies both common sense and basic decency.

ryanmercer 7y ago
>They let a 17 year old die because they didn't have enough money? They referred the parents to a facility that could actually provide treatmeint. Urgent Care /= ER/A&E. They are for non-life threatening illnesses. For some sort of comparison it would be like taking your car that has smoke pouring from underneath the hood to the place on the corner that only sells car parts and has very limited diagnostic tools to try and help you figure out what the issue is.
ng12 7y ago
They didn't turn him out on the street: they sent him to the emergency room and he died en-route. Urgent care clinics are not hospitals, they don't even like writing prescriptions for anything other than antibiotics. At best they could have called him an ambulance.
- CodeWriter23 7y ago
  The kid would likely have died waiting for an ambulance in Los Angeles. Especially up in the Antelope Valley. If he had transportation, expeditiously sending him on his way was the right call.
- fiftyfifty 7y ago
  This. People need to understand that these clinics are not equipped to deal with this stuff, they do not have ventilators and equipment like that. They are not hospitals, some are no bigger than a dentist office. Some clinics like this may only have one doctor on staff with just Nurses and PAs seeing patients. If this kid was in that bad of shape they probably couldn't have helped him at this facility.
  - salawat 7y ago
    Doesn't matter. If they made the professional judgement call he needed more than they could offer, someone should have been calling 911 in order to get a meat wagon on the way. If he was bad enough gone to have to head to an ER, th he Urgent Care should have at a minimum hit him with prednisone and a nebulizer treatment to get his airways open. Most also have Epi-Pens on site if they were really worried about his chances of making it to the hospital alive. You don't get to cherry-pick patients because it's inconvenient. Shit happens, and you're the Doc/NP. Get out the prescription pad, write a scrip or call in to the nearest pharmacy to expedite, and have office staff or whoever drove him in pick it up. Welcome to professional culpability. Now if what they said was, we won't see you because you can't pay; go to the ER, some naming and shaming is in order.
    - ng12 7y ago
      If someone's at risk of dying on the way to the hospital making a CVS run is not the right call.
      - salawat 7y ago
        More meant as a mitigation to "The ambulance will be here in 15 minutes. Go next door, get this, and bring it back so I can keep him alive until then." You are by no means helpless as a medical practitioner with modern pharmaceuticals minutes away most anywhere. Not "Stop at CVS on your way there." Once a medical practitioner sees you are in need of more intensive care the onus is on them to ensure they do what they can to get you there alive. I'm fairly secure in my assertion of these courses of action. Even bounced it off an RN to make sure; so I'm not just pulling it out of my ass here.
- bjourne 7y ago
  But when they did, they must have realized he was in a life-threatening situation. Covid-19 doesn't make you go from a minor cough to death in a few hours.
  - ng12 7y ago
    That's why they wouldn't have been able to do anything for him. They don't have the means to intubate him. They only handle minor physical injuries, x-rays, vaccines, and things treatable by routine prescriptions.
    - bjourne 7y ago
      But they could have done something for him! They could have called an ambulance for him to ensure that he was rushed into a proper healthcare facility! That they didn't and just turned him away because he lacked proper insurance is sick and insane. That's would have happened in any country with universal healthcare. If I go to a local healthcare facility and they think I'm having symptoms of a heart attack they just don't shrug their shoulders. They would call an ambulance and get me to a real hospital asap. Look at the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkhnAF7E5xw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkhnAF7E5xw All they did was refer him to another hospital. Sickening.
- bjourne 7y ago
  They referred him to another hospital. That's what I would call "turn him out on the street". Likely, the boy had no idea how bad his condition was. Had he been examined by the physicians it would have been found out and he would have been rushed to a real hospital.

ryanmercer 7y ago

>They let a 17 year old die because they didn't have enough money? They referred the parents to a facility that could actually provide treatmeint. Urgent Care /= ER/A&E. They are for non-life threatening illnesses. For some sort of comparison it would be like taking your car that has smoke pouring from underneath the hood to the place on the corner that only sells car parts and has very limited diagnostic tools to try and help you figure out what the issue is.

ng12 7y ago

They didn't turn him out on the street: they sent him to the emergency room and he died en-route. Urgent care clinics are not hospitals, they don't even like writing prescriptions for anything other than antibiotics. At best they could have called him an ambulance.

CodeWriter23 7y ago
The kid would likely have died waiting for an ambulance in Los Angeles. Especially up in the Antelope Valley. If he had transportation, expeditiously sending him on his way was the right call.
fiftyfifty 7y ago
This. People need to understand that these clinics are not equipped to deal with this stuff, they do not have ventilators and equipment like that. They are not hospitals, some are no bigger than a dentist office. Some clinics like this may only have one doctor on staff with just Nurses and PAs seeing patients. If this kid was in that bad of shape they probably couldn't have helped him at this facility.
- salawat 7y ago
  Doesn't matter. If they made the professional judgement call he needed more than they could offer, someone should have been calling 911 in order to get a meat wagon on the way. If he was bad enough gone to have to head to an ER, th he Urgent Care should have at a minimum hit him with prednisone and a nebulizer treatment to get his airways open. Most also have Epi-Pens on site if they were really worried about his chances of making it to the hospital alive. You don't get to cherry-pick patients because it's inconvenient. Shit happens, and you're the Doc/NP. Get out the prescription pad, write a scrip or call in to the nearest pharmacy to expedite, and have office staff or whoever drove him in pick it up. Welcome to professional culpability. Now if what they said was, we won't see you because you can't pay; go to the ER, some naming and shaming is in order.
  - ng12 7y ago
    If someone's at risk of dying on the way to the hospital making a CVS run is not the right call.
    - salawat 7y ago
      More meant as a mitigation to "The ambulance will be here in 15 minutes. Go next door, get this, and bring it back so I can keep him alive until then." You are by no means helpless as a medical practitioner with modern pharmaceuticals minutes away most anywhere. Not "Stop at CVS on your way there." Once a medical practitioner sees you are in need of more intensive care the onus is on them to ensure they do what they can to get you there alive. I'm fairly secure in my assertion of these courses of action. Even bounced it off an RN to make sure; so I'm not just pulling it out of my ass here.
bjourne 7y ago
But when they did, they must have realized he was in a life-threatening situation. Covid-19 doesn't make you go from a minor cough to death in a few hours.
- ng12 7y ago
  That's why they wouldn't have been able to do anything for him. They don't have the means to intubate him. They only handle minor physical injuries, x-rays, vaccines, and things treatable by routine prescriptions.
  - bjourne 7y ago
    But they could have done something for him! They could have called an ambulance for him to ensure that he was rushed into a proper healthcare facility! That they didn't and just turned him away because he lacked proper insurance is sick and insane. That's would have happened in any country with universal healthcare. If I go to a local healthcare facility and they think I'm having symptoms of a heart attack they just don't shrug their shoulders. They would call an ambulance and get me to a real hospital asap. Look at the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkhnAF7E5xw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkhnAF7E5xw All they did was refer him to another hospital. Sickening.
bjourne 7y ago
They referred him to another hospital. That's what I would call "turn him out on the street". Likely, the boy had no idea how bad his condition was. Had he been examined by the physicians it would have been found out and he would have been rushed to a real hospital.