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You'd be amazed how bad hospitals can be at keeping track of fairly critical things. I had a cousin who voluntarily checked himself into the hospital related t

by jofer 2y ago

You'd be amazed how bad hospitals can be at keeping track of fairly critical things. I had a cousin who voluntarily checked himself into the hospital related to severe withdrawal symptoms (and had bouts of psychosis related to said with withdrawal - meth addictions are nasty). His mother stayed for awhile but had to leave for work. She was repeatedly guaranteed by multiple doctors and nurses that he could not check himself out and would be there for several days at least. They told her to come back the next morning. Late that night, he was discharged. Not even "he checked himself out". The hospital discharged him (and that's over an hour ride away from home, btw - no hospitals in rural areas these days). He had no phone and no wallet. According to staff, he tried to call his mother to pick him up, but couldn't remember her cell phone number (it had changed recently). He called his sister and left a message, but she was traveling and didn't get it until much later. According to the hospital, he tried to call several different numbers trying to get a ride home and they made him stop and made him leave. In a quite rough downtown area he was not familiar with. While clearly not in his right mind. At 2am. With no wallet, no phone, no nothing. The hospital had his mother's contact info. They did not give it to him even when he requested it. They did not attempt to contact her in any way. We still don't know what happened afterwards. His body was found four days later in the river and it had been there for awhile. Forcibly discharging someone under those circumstances and refusing to even contact their emergency contacts is beyond belief. I'm furious about it. Apparently it's common and not even something there's any recourse for.

mrinfinitiesx 2y ago
Reading that makes me incredibly outraged. I'm sorry that happened and your family had to go through that.
JohnMakin 2y ago
When I was a teenageer a school counselor incorrectly perceived me to be in a crisis and had me sent to 72 hour hold (which stays on certain records for quite a while and can be incredibly disruptive, but that's besides the point) - for some reason I was sent almost 40 miles away in another county in a city I'd never been. The hospital doctors took one look at me and realized I didn't belong there, but to do a discharge apparently is a pretty lengthy process once this process is initiated - almost 20 hours later (again, being held completely against my will for no reason) they released me. I asked them where I was supposed to go and if I could call my dad. They said no, but they gave me two (2) bus tokens, which wasn't enough to get back where my car was parked at the school, plus I had no idea how to use the bus system in that county, and didn't have my glasses, phone, or wallet. I really don't know how long it took or how I made it, but many many hours later I made it back to my car. I had to beg for money and walk the last several miles once I recognized finally where I was. It really sucked, and ever since then I've had a great deal of sympathy for people that are churned through this terrible system and spit right back out with no dignity whatsoever, let alone empathy. This incident disrupted my life irreversibly (ended up missing tests and having to do a medical withdrawal from school, lost scholarships, etc) and derailed a lot of things I had wanted to do for many, many years. The hospital/medical care industrial complex doesn't optimize for empathy. They're just trying to get the bodies through as quickly as possible.
- FireBeyond 2y ago
  > in a crisis and had me sent to 72 hour hold Oftentimes it's not even that, or can go to the opposite extreme. It can be "or until evaluated by a psychiatrist or MHP". I'm a paramedic in Washington. The biggest example of this I remember was a 14yo, intentional pharma overdose. We brought her in, "invol". Four and a half hours later, call goes out, same address, 14 year old girl, overdose. We checked with dispatch, was there a glitch? Nope. Psychiatrist had spoken to her, determined she was "no threat to herself". Parents drove her home, and within fifteen minutes she'd locked herself in the bathroom again, and taken more of the same meds. Was furious. Between the psychiatrist, parents not locking up the meds, hell, the ER, she probably still had drugs in her system. "Maybe hold on to her for more than four hours this time." Also, tangentially, if EMS wants to transport you involuntarily, we actually need Law Enforcement involvement - they don't even necessarily need to talk to the patient, but they do need to complete the paperwork that takes them into custody, which they then "assign" to us. EMS generally has no power to treat you against your will (however, if you are actively a threat to yourself, we can act on that, usually restraint and sedation. Or there is 'implied consent' where if you lose the ability to effectively consent, the law assumes that a rational person would want aid to be rendered).
  - JohnMakin 2y ago
    I’m aware of a lot of this dynamic and have written extensively about it elsewhere - in this case though, especially looking back, it was ridiculous. I was extremely stressed about finals and didnt know what to do. Was borderline homeless and struggling to support myself. I had never seen a counselor or therapist before and was mildly depressed. she asked me a few leading questions like “how would you feel if you failed your finals and dropped out?” and I said something along the lines of “I guess I’d feel suicidal.” then, “do you feel suicidal now?” and I said I wasn’t sure. Then she goes, “so you cant tell me if you go home right now, you cant guarantee me you won’t kill yourself?” now at this point I had zero ideation even, no plan, no intentions of killing myself, but being a pedantic dork studying philosophy I said I wasn’t sure about that, because I really wasn’t sure what to say. 10 minutes later a cop shows up, puts me in handcuffs, parades me off campus in them and people I knew saw it. I had absolutely no clue what was going on and had to sign papers I didn’t want to sign and when I protested the answer was basically “you can come voluntarily or with force, your choice.” It ended up doing far more harm than good for me. I know physicians personally that will often throw people into 72 hour holds in the ER “just to be safe,” either not understanding or caring the long term consequences of being put in an involuntary hold. These same physicians have told me she did the “right” thing but anyone with common sense and experience could figure out very quickly I was not a danger to anyone. I was just trying to find some help because I was overwhelmed.
SkyPuncher 2y ago
[flagged]
- lazyasciiart 2y ago
  > A patient discharged in the middle of the night is not going to be literally kicked to the curb in the middle of the night. This does, very literally, happen. It should not happen, and may even be directly against hospital rules, but it does happen. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/woman-filmed-on-street-in-hospital-gown_n_5a577e38e4b0616638288d39 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/woman-filmed-on-street-in-hos...
  - ahazred8ta 2y ago
    2018: Feds Investigate After Mentally Confused Patient In Hospital Gown Was Left At Baltimore Bus Stop On Cold January Night
  - monetus 2y ago
    As the sibling commented, here is another sad example. https://apnews.com/article/tennessee-woman-died-hospital-police-61205726cb2d80efbd3f09a8edc76c96 https://apnews.com/article/tennessee-woman-died-hospital-pol... > Edwards was “rolled by hospital security guards into the freezing cold wearing only paper scrubs, placed under physical arrest, and forcibly removed by police officers from the hospital property,” according to the lawsuit, which says it was 29 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 1.7 Celsius) at the time.
    - SkyPuncher 2y ago
      This quote is not complete and materially changes the context. This women was transferred directly to the police where she was being put in a squad car. She was not "tossed to the curb". It's a shitty situation, but it seems plausible that she was medically clear but suffered a stroke during the incident. Security staff and police officers handled it extremely poorly, but this woman was not just left alone on the streets.
      - 2y ago
colechristensen 2y ago
Are they suing the hospital and care team for many millions of dollars? That's the level of neglect of responsibility that should get you enough money to own the hospital that did that kind of thing. I regularly have to aggressively bully medical care teams for myself and others to get them to do the right, obvious things. I do not trust doctors, they do not care to figure out problems, ignore so many people's problems, and make wildly stupid mistakes all of the time.
- ghostly_s 2y ago
  > Are they suing the hospital and care team for many millions of dollars? Did you try clicking the link? They are. 5 million dollars. I expect they will win, and that still won't make them whole.
  - tailspin2019 2y ago
    You’re replying to someone who in turn was asking the GP a question about their comment, not about the article.
nostrademons 2y ago
I wonder how much this correlates with socioeconomic status. When my kids were born, the hospital had this incredibly elaborate, incredibly detailed checklists of things that needed to be in order before they would let you leave. Did you have a carseat? Did you have a ride home? Did the doctor come by and give you discharge instructions? Do you have all the belongings you came with? Did you fill out the birth certificate application? Have all your discharge papers been signed? They actually wouldn't let my wife walk herself down - they had to call Transport, and she had to be wheeled down in a wheelchair with the baby's carseat on her lap, and I had to be waiting at the designated curbside to pick her up. She was perfectly capable of walking herself down, and we were both capable of putting the carseat into the car in a normal parking spot, but everything had to be done in the presence of an orderly. This is the same health care company mentioned in the article, but at a pretty affluent suburb of Silicon Valley.
- ghostly_s 2y ago
  None of those checklist things are done out of an interest in care - it is about avoiding liability.
  - munificent 2y ago
    I don't understand the completely unnecessary cynicism in this comment. Do you really believe that everyone working in maternity wards in hospitals cares absolutely nothing about babies?
    - iamthepieman 2y ago
      But your not being taken care of by a person. Your being taken care of by the system. The nice nurse goes home in 3 hours, the nice doctor has 9 other patients. The secretary relies on the information in The computer. The people may very well care a lot. The system does not.
      - elgenie 2y ago
        Checklists have been demonstrated to improve care quality because when it's the not-so-nice nurse that's on shift, and the doctor's been awake for 60 hours straight, the stuff that's on the checklist still gets done.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
SCUSKU 2y ago
Good lord that's awful, I'm sorry for your loss.
lupusreal 2y ago
Such professionalism and high quality care like this are why American doctors deserve their huge salaries, massive houses and vacation properties, boats and sports cars, and of course are entitled to our thanks and adoration. Truly, a saintly class of people who all got into this line of work to help people.
- shiroiushi 2y ago
  I think the doctors aren't the ones to blame here, it's the hospital administrators.
  - lupusreal 2y ago
    American doctors want the public to believe they are powerless victims of the system that makes them wealthy while bankrupting patients.
- rxyz 2y ago
  News flash - most doctors all over the world are doing it for money and status. It's a job.
unethical_ban 2y ago
To force someone out who was guaranteed wouldn't be; to withhold documented caretaker/relative phone numbers from them when they have no other help; then to force them from the premises with no resources. I want this to be a lie, but I don't treat HN comments that way. This is horrible, absolutely appalling.
Arrath 2y ago
> You'd be amazed how bad hospitals can be at keeping track of fairly critical things. Got to experience that first-hand when my partner lost her pregnancy. We went in for the procedure to remove the nonviable fetus and were advised we had 14 days to arrange for a mortuary to take the remains if we wished to keep them, which we did. At 7 days when the mortuary tried to arrange for pick-up, we were informed that the hospital had disposed of the remains. It was "very uncommon" for people to want to take the remains, so they got lax in following their procedure and jumped the guns. Left us nothing to take home. It still sucks.
- nick3443 2y ago
  That sucks. I hope you will get to take home a healthy baby in your future.
  - Arrath 2y ago
    Thank you, we're hoping so too.
- DoctorOetker 2y ago
  that stuff is worth a lot, probably went to the highest bidder, tissue banks, stem cells, ... they probably tell the same to all the parents, to redirect the anger towards some average Jane and Joe... while trying not to visualize the ice and careful packaging in which they got it "disposed off" through some medical courier. (sarcasm warning) But who can fault them, imagine they had to explain to each pair of parents from scratch what is happening behind the scenes, and how such decisions are being made with little to no public discussion let alone democratic oversight? The time it would take compared to the harvesting itself would be intolerable. Intolerable! Not to speak of having to invest in bulletproof panes from behind which they would quickly learn to explain all this.
  - shifto 2y ago
    That's some conspiracy stuff, got proof? I mean... You're not even a real doctor, you make pizza's.
ghufran_syed 2y ago
if it's true that he was discharged and didn't leave against medical advice, that sounds like a fairly straightforward and expensive lawsuit against the hospital. And some hospitals only change their behavior when beaten by large expensive lawsuits...
nyokodo 2y ago
> Forcibly discharging someone under those circumstances and refusing to even contact their emergency contacts is beyond belief I don’t know what it is legally but morally that is negligent manslaughter.
caseyy 2y ago
One time I went to A&E in the UK, I saw a young unconscious woman outside, laying next to a wheelchair. I told the receptionist and was told she had to come in for treatment. Another patient tried to get her into the wheelchair but ultimately I got an ambulance involved to bring her in. The nurse then recognized the woman, for it was the very nurse who had rolled her out for fresh air some time ago. It was a cold night, as well. I think there was some snow, or it was about to snow. There is definitely an over-reliance on schematics in emergency medicine. The moment a slightly more complicated patient is involved or one falls outside the schematic otherwise, their risk of serious health injury or death goes up a lot. This was always interesting to me. I went to medschool, and I remember my peers as people who genuinely wanted to help others. Few would have refused to help someone collapsed outside in the cold. But our medical system has changed a lot, many more people do it for the pay slip. Most probably still care about the patients but I suppose some portion genuinely don’t. If it’s not on the schematic, they won’t care for it.
- hnlmorg 2y ago
  Being overworked will do that to you. It’s like asking a software engineer to write a hundred new features in a given sprint while the rest of the application is in flames. Eventually you stop aspiring to build good software and just hope enough of your code works that it’s good enough for some people. Unfortunately medical services are literal life and death services. So we have it much easier as software engineers.
  - agos 2y ago
    that is, until people who work in literal life and death services have to use software written by overworked engineers...
  - theblobawakens 2y ago
    I don't know why I read the last part "medieval services are literal life and death services".
- itronitron 2y ago
  I've always had the experience that all employees at hospitals act like contractors. Usually great at what they do but no sense or willingness to look beyond their direct job responsibility.
akira2501 2y ago
> Apparently it's common and not even something there's any recourse for. It's a sad fact but hospitals have no one who is responsible for advocating for your care. I think it's a major ethical flaw in our entire healthcare model. People are not medical experts or legal experts and when they are suffering they're even less capable of handling that burden. To expect the hospital with a financial incentive to do this is absolute folly. It just doesn't happen. They'll _absolutely_ get your insurance information, even when you're laying in the ER and doctors are still attending to you, but they'll provide you less than nothing when it comes to understanding your care and your options. We afford people public defenders as disinterested third parties when they're accused of the most petty of crimes, yet, you're absolutely on your own when it comes to the hospital. This is a complete social moral failure.
- Der_Einzige 2y ago
  The number one actual reason to have kids is to guarantee that you have your own de facto “medical advocate” who will do all of what you described for you. Those who don’t have kids will learn quickly how hospitals treat those without children. It’s not pretty.
romwell 2y ago
I am so sorry for what happened to your brother and your family. The hospital is directly responsible for your cousin's death. The fact that they assured the mother that they'll keep him, specifically told her to come the next day, and then forcibly discharged him at 2am without either calling his mother or even providing mother's contact to him should be grounds for criminal prosecution. This is beyond negligence. They lied to the mother and knowingly forced him out when they were responsible for his well-being. It would've cost them $0.00 to dial his mom's number. The fact that he asked for his mom's phone and they refused means they did it on purpose. This sounds very much like and indication of malicious intent to me. I hope your family sues the bejeesus out of the hospital, and that someone will get a felony charge over this. This hospital mot merely betrayed the trust of your family. It is literally a public health hazard. It should not continue existing.
lhamil64 2y ago
Last time I went to the ER, they checked me in under the completely wrong name. Like it wasn't even close. Luckily I noticed the wrist band was wrong and pointed it out, but they then had to re-do tests since they had been done under the other person. It really makes me think how bad that could have been though. What if I went unconscious, and they used the info on the wrist band to look up medical history? What if they gave me medication based on that incorrect history? And at the very least they wouldn't have the right emergency contact info...
- RoyalHenOil 2y ago
  That is potentially extremely dangerous for the person they mistook you for as well, and they would have NO way to notice it and fix it. Catching that mistake possibly saved both of your lives!
jb1991 2y ago
> You'd be amazed how bad hospitals can be at keeping track of fairly critical things. should be > You'd be amazed how bad hospitals in the States can be at keeping track of fairly critical things.
sweeter 2y ago
It's sad that the for profit healthcare system incentivises leaving an entire town without critical healthcare. It is a failure on every level.
m463 2y ago
We need AIs for personal advocacy.

by jofer 2y ago

mrinfinitiesx 2y ago

Reading that makes me incredibly outraged. I'm sorry that happened and your family had to go through that.

JohnMakin 2y ago

When I was a teenageer a school counselor incorrectly perceived me to be in a crisis and had me sent to 72 hour hold (which stays on certain records for quite a while and can be incredibly disruptive, but that's besides the point) - for some reason I was sent almost 40 miles away in another county in a city I'd never been. The hospital doctors took one look at me and realized I didn't belong there, but to do a discharge apparently is a pretty lengthy process once this process is initiated - almost 20 hours later (again, being held completely against my will for no reason) they released me. I asked them where I was supposed to go and if I could call my dad. They said no, but they gave me two (2) bus tokens, which wasn't enough to get back where my car was parked at the school, plus I had no idea how to use the bus system in that county, and didn't have my glasses, phone, or wallet. I really don't know how long it took or how I made it, but many many hours later I made it back to my car. I had to beg for money and walk the last several miles once I recognized finally where I was. It really sucked, and ever since then I've had a great deal of sympathy for people that are churned through this terrible system and spit right back out with no dignity whatsoever, let alone empathy. This incident disrupted my life irreversibly (ended up missing tests and having to do a medical withdrawal from school, lost scholarships, etc) and derailed a lot of things I had wanted to do for many, many years. The hospital/medical care industrial complex doesn't optimize for empathy. They're just trying to get the bodies through as quickly as possible.

FireBeyond 2y ago
> in a crisis and had me sent to 72 hour hold Oftentimes it's not even that, or can go to the opposite extreme. It can be "or until evaluated by a psychiatrist or MHP". I'm a paramedic in Washington. The biggest example of this I remember was a 14yo, intentional pharma overdose. We brought her in, "invol". Four and a half hours later, call goes out, same address, 14 year old girl, overdose. We checked with dispatch, was there a glitch? Nope. Psychiatrist had spoken to her, determined she was "no threat to herself". Parents drove her home, and within fifteen minutes she'd locked herself in the bathroom again, and taken more of the same meds. Was furious. Between the psychiatrist, parents not locking up the meds, hell, the ER, she probably still had drugs in her system. "Maybe hold on to her for more than four hours this time." Also, tangentially, if EMS wants to transport you involuntarily, we actually need Law Enforcement involvement - they don't even necessarily need to talk to the patient, but they do need to complete the paperwork that takes them into custody, which they then "assign" to us. EMS generally has no power to treat you against your will (however, if you are actively a threat to yourself, we can act on that, usually restraint and sedation. Or there is 'implied consent' where if you lose the ability to effectively consent, the law assumes that a rational person would want aid to be rendered).
- JohnMakin 2y ago
  I’m aware of a lot of this dynamic and have written extensively about it elsewhere - in this case though, especially looking back, it was ridiculous. I was extremely stressed about finals and didnt know what to do. Was borderline homeless and struggling to support myself. I had never seen a counselor or therapist before and was mildly depressed. she asked me a few leading questions like “how would you feel if you failed your finals and dropped out?” and I said something along the lines of “I guess I’d feel suicidal.” then, “do you feel suicidal now?” and I said I wasn’t sure. Then she goes, “so you cant tell me if you go home right now, you cant guarantee me you won’t kill yourself?” now at this point I had zero ideation even, no plan, no intentions of killing myself, but being a pedantic dork studying philosophy I said I wasn’t sure about that, because I really wasn’t sure what to say. 10 minutes later a cop shows up, puts me in handcuffs, parades me off campus in them and people I knew saw it. I had absolutely no clue what was going on and had to sign papers I didn’t want to sign and when I protested the answer was basically “you can come voluntarily or with force, your choice.” It ended up doing far more harm than good for me. I know physicians personally that will often throw people into 72 hour holds in the ER “just to be safe,” either not understanding or caring the long term consequences of being put in an involuntary hold. These same physicians have told me she did the “right” thing but anyone with common sense and experience could figure out very quickly I was not a danger to anyone. I was just trying to find some help because I was overwhelmed.

SkyPuncher 2y ago

[flagged]

lazyasciiart 2y ago
> A patient discharged in the middle of the night is not going to be literally kicked to the curb in the middle of the night. This does, very literally, happen. It should not happen, and may even be directly against hospital rules, but it does happen. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/woman-filmed-on-street-in-hospital-gown_n_5a577e38e4b0616638288d39 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/woman-filmed-on-street-in-hos...
- ahazred8ta 2y ago
  2018: Feds Investigate After Mentally Confused Patient In Hospital Gown Was Left At Baltimore Bus Stop On Cold January Night
- monetus 2y ago
  As the sibling commented, here is another sad example. https://apnews.com/article/tennessee-woman-died-hospital-police-61205726cb2d80efbd3f09a8edc76c96 https://apnews.com/article/tennessee-woman-died-hospital-pol... > Edwards was “rolled by hospital security guards into the freezing cold wearing only paper scrubs, placed under physical arrest, and forcibly removed by police officers from the hospital property,” according to the lawsuit, which says it was 29 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 1.7 Celsius) at the time.
  - SkyPuncher 2y ago
    This quote is not complete and materially changes the context. This women was transferred directly to the police where she was being put in a squad car. She was not "tossed to the curb". It's a shitty situation, but it seems plausible that she was medically clear but suffered a stroke during the incident. Security staff and police officers handled it extremely poorly, but this woman was not just left alone on the streets.
    - 2y ago

colechristensen 2y ago

Are they suing the hospital and care team for many millions of dollars? That's the level of neglect of responsibility that should get you enough money to own the hospital that did that kind of thing. I regularly have to aggressively bully medical care teams for myself and others to get them to do the right, obvious things. I do not trust doctors, they do not care to figure out problems, ignore so many people's problems, and make wildly stupid mistakes all of the time.

ghostly_s 2y ago
> Are they suing the hospital and care team for many millions of dollars? Did you try clicking the link? They are. 5 million dollars. I expect they will win, and that still won't make them whole.
- tailspin2019 2y ago
  You’re replying to someone who in turn was asking the GP a question about their comment, not about the article.

nostrademons 2y ago

I wonder how much this correlates with socioeconomic status. When my kids were born, the hospital had this incredibly elaborate, incredibly detailed checklists of things that needed to be in order before they would let you leave. Did you have a carseat? Did you have a ride home? Did the doctor come by and give you discharge instructions? Do you have all the belongings you came with? Did you fill out the birth certificate application? Have all your discharge papers been signed? They actually wouldn't let my wife walk herself down - they had to call Transport, and she had to be wheeled down in a wheelchair with the baby's carseat on her lap, and I had to be waiting at the designated curbside to pick her up. She was perfectly capable of walking herself down, and we were both capable of putting the carseat into the car in a normal parking spot, but everything had to be done in the presence of an orderly. This is the same health care company mentioned in the article, but at a pretty affluent suburb of Silicon Valley.

ghostly_s 2y ago
None of those checklist things are done out of an interest in care - it is about avoiding liability.
- munificent 2y ago
  I don't understand the completely unnecessary cynicism in this comment. Do you really believe that everyone working in maternity wards in hospitals cares absolutely nothing about babies?
  - iamthepieman 2y ago
    But your not being taken care of by a person. Your being taken care of by the system. The nice nurse goes home in 3 hours, the nice doctor has 9 other patients. The secretary relies on the information in The computer. The people may very well care a lot. The system does not.
    - elgenie 2y ago
      Checklists have been demonstrated to improve care quality because when it's the not-so-nice nurse that's on shift, and the doctor's been awake for 60 hours straight, the stuff that's on the checklist still gets done.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

SCUSKU 2y ago

Good lord that's awful, I'm sorry for your loss.

lupusreal 2y ago

Such professionalism and high quality care like this are why American doctors deserve their huge salaries, massive houses and vacation properties, boats and sports cars, and of course are entitled to our thanks and adoration. Truly, a saintly class of people who all got into this line of work to help people.

shiroiushi 2y ago
I think the doctors aren't the ones to blame here, it's the hospital administrators.
- lupusreal 2y ago
  American doctors want the public to believe they are powerless victims of the system that makes them wealthy while bankrupting patients.
rxyz 2y ago
News flash - most doctors all over the world are doing it for money and status. It's a job.

unethical_ban 2y ago

To force someone out who was guaranteed wouldn't be; to withhold documented caretaker/relative phone numbers from them when they have no other help; then to force them from the premises with no resources. I want this to be a lie, but I don't treat HN comments that way. This is horrible, absolutely appalling.

Arrath 2y ago

> You'd be amazed how bad hospitals can be at keeping track of fairly critical things. Got to experience that first-hand when my partner lost her pregnancy. We went in for the procedure to remove the nonviable fetus and were advised we had 14 days to arrange for a mortuary to take the remains if we wished to keep them, which we did. At 7 days when the mortuary tried to arrange for pick-up, we were informed that the hospital had disposed of the remains. It was "very uncommon" for people to want to take the remains, so they got lax in following their procedure and jumped the guns. Left us nothing to take home. It still sucks.

nick3443 2y ago
That sucks. I hope you will get to take home a healthy baby in your future.
- Arrath 2y ago
  Thank you, we're hoping so too.
DoctorOetker 2y ago
that stuff is worth a lot, probably went to the highest bidder, tissue banks, stem cells, ... they probably tell the same to all the parents, to redirect the anger towards some average Jane and Joe... while trying not to visualize the ice and careful packaging in which they got it "disposed off" through some medical courier. (sarcasm warning) But who can fault them, imagine they had to explain to each pair of parents from scratch what is happening behind the scenes, and how such decisions are being made with little to no public discussion let alone democratic oversight? The time it would take compared to the harvesting itself would be intolerable. Intolerable! Not to speak of having to invest in bulletproof panes from behind which they would quickly learn to explain all this.
- shifto 2y ago
  That's some conspiracy stuff, got proof? I mean... You're not even a real doctor, you make pizza's.

ghufran_syed 2y ago

if it's true that he was discharged and didn't leave against medical advice, that sounds like a fairly straightforward and expensive lawsuit against the hospital. And some hospitals only change their behavior when beaten by large expensive lawsuits...

nyokodo 2y ago

> Forcibly discharging someone under those circumstances and refusing to even contact their emergency contacts is beyond belief I don’t know what it is legally but morally that is negligent manslaughter.

caseyy 2y ago

One time I went to A&E in the UK, I saw a young unconscious woman outside, laying next to a wheelchair. I told the receptionist and was told she had to come in for treatment. Another patient tried to get her into the wheelchair but ultimately I got an ambulance involved to bring her in. The nurse then recognized the woman, for it was the very nurse who had rolled her out for fresh air some time ago. It was a cold night, as well. I think there was some snow, or it was about to snow. There is definitely an over-reliance on schematics in emergency medicine. The moment a slightly more complicated patient is involved or one falls outside the schematic otherwise, their risk of serious health injury or death goes up a lot. This was always interesting to me. I went to medschool, and I remember my peers as people who genuinely wanted to help others. Few would have refused to help someone collapsed outside in the cold. But our medical system has changed a lot, many more people do it for the pay slip. Most probably still care about the patients but I suppose some portion genuinely don’t. If it’s not on the schematic, they won’t care for it.

hnlmorg 2y ago
Being overworked will do that to you. It’s like asking a software engineer to write a hundred new features in a given sprint while the rest of the application is in flames. Eventually you stop aspiring to build good software and just hope enough of your code works that it’s good enough for some people. Unfortunately medical services are literal life and death services. So we have it much easier as software engineers.
- agos 2y ago
  that is, until people who work in literal life and death services have to use software written by overworked engineers...
- theblobawakens 2y ago
  I don't know why I read the last part "medieval services are literal life and death services".
itronitron 2y ago
I've always had the experience that all employees at hospitals act like contractors. Usually great at what they do but no sense or willingness to look beyond their direct job responsibility.

akira2501 2y ago

> Apparently it's common and not even something there's any recourse for. It's a sad fact but hospitals have no one who is responsible for advocating for your care. I think it's a major ethical flaw in our entire healthcare model. People are not medical experts or legal experts and when they are suffering they're even less capable of handling that burden. To expect the hospital with a financial incentive to do this is absolute folly. It just doesn't happen. They'll _absolutely_ get your insurance information, even when you're laying in the ER and doctors are still attending to you, but they'll provide you less than nothing when it comes to understanding your care and your options. We afford people public defenders as disinterested third parties when they're accused of the most petty of crimes, yet, you're absolutely on your own when it comes to the hospital. This is a complete social moral failure.

Der_Einzige 2y ago
The number one actual reason to have kids is to guarantee that you have your own de facto “medical advocate” who will do all of what you described for you. Those who don’t have kids will learn quickly how hospitals treat those without children. It’s not pretty.

romwell 2y ago

I am so sorry for what happened to your brother and your family. The hospital is directly responsible for your cousin's death. The fact that they assured the mother that they'll keep him, specifically told her to come the next day, and then forcibly discharged him at 2am without either calling his mother or even providing mother's contact to him should be grounds for criminal prosecution. This is beyond negligence. They lied to the mother and knowingly forced him out when they were responsible for his well-being. It would've cost them $0.00 to dial his mom's number. The fact that he asked for his mom's phone and they refused means they did it on purpose. This sounds very much like and indication of malicious intent to me. I hope your family sues the bejeesus out of the hospital, and that someone will get a felony charge over this. This hospital mot merely betrayed the trust of your family. It is literally a public health hazard. It should not continue existing.

lhamil64 2y ago

Last time I went to the ER, they checked me in under the completely wrong name. Like it wasn't even close. Luckily I noticed the wrist band was wrong and pointed it out, but they then had to re-do tests since they had been done under the other person. It really makes me think how bad that could have been though. What if I went unconscious, and they used the info on the wrist band to look up medical history? What if they gave me medication based on that incorrect history? And at the very least they wouldn't have the right emergency contact info...

RoyalHenOil 2y ago
That is potentially extremely dangerous for the person they mistook you for as well, and they would have NO way to notice it and fix it. Catching that mistake possibly saved both of your lives!

jb1991 2y ago

> You'd be amazed how bad hospitals can be at keeping track of fairly critical things. should be > You'd be amazed how bad hospitals in the States can be at keeping track of fairly critical things.

sweeter 2y ago

It's sad that the for profit healthcare system incentivises leaving an entire town without critical healthcare. It is a failure on every level.

m463 2y ago

We need AIs for personal advocacy.