Teen dies of heat stroke after being denied help at Norton care center, family tells officials

[hedgehog]

http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20110722/NEWS01/307220066/Man-dies-heat-stroke-aid-may-been-denied-Norton-care-center?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|Home
***********************************************************************
The article is he said/he said, but it sounds very familiar to me:

On December 27th, Amy Roy says she was in the final stages of labor while her husband was driving her to Crouse Hospital. When Roy realized she couldn't make it to Crouse in time, her husband Jason drove her to Fulton Urgent Care.

The Roys say a male nurse prevented them from entering Fulton Urgent Care, while staff called 911. By the time fire department and ambulance crews arrived, Amy Roy says she was already delivering the baby. She says her son Maddox was born in the parking lot, in sub-freezing temperatures in view of passers-by. The baby was not harmed by the unusual birth, but the Roys complained about her treatment at Fulton Urgent Care and being blocked from even entering the facility.

http://www.cnycentral.com/news/story.aspx?id=578652
***********************************************************************
The local urgent care center sent out a flyer outlining when to go to the urgent care center and when to the emergency room. For example, sprains go to urgent care, broken bones to the ER. Here's my reaction: if I know it's just a sprain, I'll wrap it and put it on ice and take some ibuprofen. I'd like to know how I'm supposed to know if it's a severe sprain or broken bone! Mild asthma goes to urgent care, trouble breathing to the ER. Now, you take a two year old who is wheezing and decide where you're going!

I think these urgent care centers are nothing more than a profit center for various hospitals. What's the difference between having a doctor and two nurses on stand-by at a stand alone office and having the same people on staff at the ER where critical equipment is available if needed.

Another part of my rant: my daughter cut her foot and needed stitches. She drove past a city hospital to go out to its suburban branch because she knew that on a Saturday night in the city, she's be waiting hours. At the suburban hospital, run by the same corporation, she was seen immediately.

[mnhtnbb]

1. We had an incident a couple years ago of a teen football player

calling 911 from his home after practice in dangerous heat. EMT's arrived
but refused to transport the boy to the hospital--and yes,
he died at home.

Yes, he was African-American.

[hedgehog]

2. It's a tangle of problems. I don't think I've seen a single article

about the high cost of health care that didn't refer to people using the ER as a family doctor.

Now, my doctor is in practice by himself, so he doesn't have week-end or evening coverage. If I have a problem that can't wait, I have to go to the ER. Supposedly the urgent care centers are the solution to this. However, they depend on you to decide whether you need hospital facilities. (what does the ER do if it's just a sprain, send you over to Urgent Care?) And apparently, if they decide you need hospital facilities, some will leave you out in the parking lot!

On edit: I think we're dealing with racism, classism and the profit motive here.

[eilen]

10. I can tell you that in our ED there is a fast track

but there are times when we get hit with a large number of patients at one time and once triaged, it can take a while before the doctor sees you--esp. if there are some real critical cases coming in. A fracture may wait awhile. There are some standard tests that are practically automatic when someone comes in-- like that poor football player, they would have put him on a monitor, drawn blood, gotten a urine sample and then once labs are back (turnaround is pretty quick) iV fluids and an exam. We have had many in for heat exhaustion or chest pain, nausea etc. because of the heat and our EMTs do bring people in repeatedly if requested by the patient.

No one is required to go to urgent care, it is your choice-- they will send you to the ED if they have evaluated you need a higher level of care but they usually call the ambulance and call a report into the ED.

[eilen]

3. They should have never closed A. L. Lee hospital in Fulton

The urgent care centers are not equipped at all to handle birthing babies. Fulton is about 30-40 minutes to Crouse, St. Joes is a little closer and Oswego hospital is about 20 minutes north. Why did they wait so long to go to the hospital?

NYS DOH closed Fulton hospital.

City hospitals are busier because they are in a more populated area and often house trauma centers and frankly a higher number of knife/gun wounds, poor people with chronic health probems that have gone to crisis level so naturally there is less of a wait in a suburban hospital in which the surrounding population has a higher rate of having primary care physicians. For a cut foot--cleaning and stitching your daughter would be fast tracked in our city ED and out in about 45 minutes.

[ejpoeta]

4. oh that's just bullshit. if she was in labor enough to have the baby in the parking lot

then someone in that damned hospital should have been equipped to help her deliver that baby. an EMT has enough to help deliver a baby ffs!

[eilen]

9. I truly don't believe they should have refused them

entry into the urgent care. Instead, they should have called 911 and gotten an ambulance. Oswego Hospital is not far from the Urgent Care-- they should have gone there instead of wasting time arguing with the asshole in Fulton.

[hedgehog]

6. Regardless of whether she had a fast labor or just sat around

waiting to go to the hospital, she ended up delivering in sub-zero temps in a parking lot instead of on a warm lobby floor.

You note that in your city ER, my daughter would have been in and out in a reasonable time. That should be true of every ER, short of a major disaster. I suspect that the problems with our ERs have more to do with cost shifting than anything else.

[shraby]

8. A woman never knows how long it will take to deliver. My aunt

had 4 and for each one the labor was about half the time of the last one.

[Patiod]

5. Better they had called 911 and driven him to a 7-11

Bought a few bags of ice and some Gatorade, and packed his groin and armpits with ice while he drank Gatorade and waited inside in the a/c.

Why would the Urgent Care just let them wait inside? Given him ice, if they had any? Common sense?

[Maru Kitteh]

7. At our Urgent Care (Kearney, NE) the doctor packed my BF into his own SUV and drove her to the ER

himself when she landed in his office with a potassium imbalance that led to crazy/scary blood pressure (240/120).

I can't imagine a single professional I know refusing to treat a teen w/heat stroke while their office called 911. How incredibly sad. Poor kid was ignored/neglected/mistreated by more than a few people in this story, it seems. Step-dad should not have had him working on landscaping at the highest heat of the day in one of the worst summers on record.