You've been to a hospital, right?
You know, the places where they supposedly treat sick people, following the Hippocratic Oath, and try to get them well?
Don't make the mistake of lumping the Martin Luther King Jr - Harbor Hospital, in Los Angeles, in with those places.
I've been in hospitals. Most of them are professional, well-equipped, and make serious attempts to do the best thing for the patients.
Good thing I'm not in LA.
On May 9th, at the afore-mentioned non-hospital, a woman died.
That happens; people die all the time, even in the hospital.
But they don't usually bleed to death from a perforated bowel while right in the middle of the emergency room, while hospital employees refuse to treat them, and the 911 dispatchers refuse to help.
Yeah, you heard me right.
Hospital janitors did a stellar job, or so the story claims, cleaning up the blood and vomit around the dying woman as she convulsed on the floor, yet made no attempt to help her, or get the attention of anyone who could.
Upon asking, her husband was informed that she had been discharged and was no longer a patient, and as such the hospital didn't have to treat her.
Upon calling 911, her boyfriend was informed that 911 couldn't and wouldn't do anything to help, because they were at a hospital. A second bystander called 911 as well, and after the dispatcher refused to help despite a fairly graphic description of the hospital's monumental indifference to her plight, the bystander told the dispatcher that God should strike him for his actions.
The LA County Medical Examiner has ruled the death of Edith Isabel Rodriguez "accidental."
It was an accident only in the sense that that "hospital" is the place the ambulance crew brought her.
The MLK-Harbor Hospital, it turns out, has a long track record of killing its patients; in fact...
...wait for it...
it's NEAR losing federal funding, and is under investigation.
"Investigation?"
Explain to me what has to be investigated? This "hospital," having received a patient for treatment via ambulance, allowed her to bleed and convulse on the floor for 45 minutes, with hospital staff including trained nurses watching her and NOT DOING A GODDAMN THING, until she DIED.
"No more federal funding" doesn't cut it, folks. Every doctor at that hospital ought to lose his license, as should the nurses; everyone on staff at the emergency room that night should get jail time for negligent homicide; the hospital ought to be immediately closed; and further, the night shift nurses on the admissions desk at the emergency room should be beaten with canes, Singapore-style.
You killed a woman, deprived her of her life, because you couldn't be bothered to walk 20 feet to see what was up, you pathetic wastes of oxygen.
You killed her, because you were lazy.
I'd reserve some hate for the 911 system, as well; what kind of human being, much less a trained dispatcher, tells a man who is watching his wife die that he can't even contact paramedics for him?
What kind of human being mops up blood around someone convulsing and doesn't even report it?
WHAT KIND OF GODDAMN ANIMALS DO YOU HAVE RUNNING THIS FACILITY, ANYWAY?!?
This is not about universal health care. It is not about medical malpractice lawsuits. It is not about a hospital failing a single patient. It is about a hospital which has failed minimum standards "repeatedly;" a hospital which employs a triage nurse capable of missing peritonitis - one of the most painful conditions a human being can suffer - not once, or even twice, but on THREE SEPARATE OCCASIONS; a hospital which employs staff so callous they mop up the blood around her convulsing body and move on without even attempting to report anything out of the ordinary; a hospital so oblivious to the plight of its patients that it allowed a woman to convulse and vomit blood on the floor for FORTY-FIVE MINUTES without making any attempt to treat, or triage, her.
It is about the county officials refusing to decertify and close that hospital.
It is about the LA County Sheriff's Department operating a 911 call center with not one, but two different dispatchers who reacted to this call with such unconcern they didn't even note it as a request for assistance.
It is about a huge, grievous failure on the part of the Los Angeles government; and it is one that by God should not be allowed to pass unchallenged.
This woman lost her life to simple, glaring indifference.
That indifference should be repaid with every legal action, both civil and criminal, that can possibly be thrown at them, and then the matter should be taken out of the LA County Sheriff's jurisdiction, so that he doesn't get a Paris Hilton-style soft spot for these negligent murderers, and let them go with 3 days served.
Fuck them. Let these disgusting specimens rot in jail forever. It won't bring Ms. Rodriguez back, but it might make her boyfriend and son feel that justice was done. That might actually happen this time; see, this time, the whole sorry ordeal, all 45 minutes of her death, was captured on video.
