911 Calls Placed While Woman Dies In E.R.

[Dardedar]

I heard this story on my radio, on CNN today. Breathtaking. Sad.

***
Mom Dies Awaiting Help In Emergency Room

ABCNews

Jun. 13 - A woman is lying on the floor of a Los Angeles County hospital emergency room. She is throwing up blood. Family members say hospital workers ignored their pleas for help, so they called 911 from the hospital frantically seeking help.

A half an hour later, Edith Rodriquez, 43, a mother of three, was dead, leaving the family reeling. The county supervisor is outraged, and it's all been caught on tape.

At 1:43 a.m. May 9, Rodriquez's boyfriend, Jose Prado, placed the first call to 911 from a pay phone just outside the emergency room at Los Angeles' Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital.

911 Operator: "What's wrong with her?," the 911 operator asked.

Prado: "She's vomiting blood."

The operator then questions why hospital officials are not helping Rodriguez.

Prado: "They're watching her and they're not doing anything. Just watching her."

Rodriguez had been to the emergency room on three separate occasions. Each time she was released after being given prescriptions for pain.

This time, she lay on the floor of the emergency room for 45 minutes. A security video shows staffers and other patients standing by as a janitor cleaned the floor around her.

Eight minutes after the first call, another call to 911 apparently comes from another person not related to Rodriquez. "There's a woman on the ground of the emergency room at Martin Luther King and they're overlooking her," the female caller says, "and they're ignoring her."

The operator asks the caller what she wants him to do and informs the woman to contact hospital personnel. The conversation then becomes tense as the operator lets the caller know he cannot send an ambulance to the hospital.

"I cannot do anything for you for the quality of the hospital there," the operator says. "This line is for emergency purposes only."

"May [God] strike you too for acting the way you are," the caller responds. The operator says, "No negative, ma'am. You're the one."

The county coroner ruled that Rodriguez died of a perforated bowel.

After listening to the tapes, L.A. County supervisor Zev Yarovslosky called the hospital's actions a moral and human breakdown.

Last week, federal inspectors declared that patients at King-Harbor were in "immediate jeopardy" of harm or death and gave the hospital 23 days to correct procedures or lose certification. It was the fourth time in less than four years that the hospital had received the warning, according to The Los Angeles Times.

"I hope it's a lesson to the rest of the community that when somebody's in trouble and the appropriated reaction is not to turn your back on that somebody," Yarovslosky said. "It's to put your hand out and see how you can help."

The supervisor of that second dispatcher said his tone on the call was inappropriate. The medical director of the hospital has been ousted for his handling of an unrelated lapse in patient care.

ABC

[Doug]

DOUG
I heard the recording of the calls on TV. It was chilling. The second 911 call from someone unrelated was really the clincher. The 911 operator acted annoyed, as if the person was out of line to be calling.

Horrible.