I can tell you that so many of the people who use the ER as their doctor's office do learn to work the system. I can remember people walking in and faking heart attacks just to get to the front of the line--when, in actuality, they were suffering from some ailment like a sore throat. It's a very hard call, sometimes-and the fact that the lady had already been there 3 times that day tells me that A: the doctors who saw her misdiagnosed her or B: Something about her had given the ER personnel the idea that she wasn't really sick, that she was gaming the system, for whatever reason.
Either way, it's too bad the lady died---and will be interesting to see what the autopsy shows. If the ER personnel were negligent and either misdiagnosed or failed to diagnose what her problem was, that can be held against them. They will have to be able to show that the right tests were run, and that the results of the tests didn't show anything threatening.
Don’t forget the beginning, she was picked up in front of another hospital.
Snip:
Inquiry
click to enlargeIn the emergency room at Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital, Edith Isabel Rodriguez was seen as a complainer.
“Thanks a lot, officers,” an emergency room nurse told Los Angeles County police who brought in Rodriguez early May 9 after finding her in front of the Willowbrook hospital yelling for help. “This is her third time here.”
The 43-year-old mother of three had been released from the emergency room hours earlier, her third visit in three days for abdominal pain. She’d been given prescription medication and a doctor’s appointment.
Large perforation in the large bowel.
I can diagnose by modem from 3000 miles away that this woman had a ruptured appendix.
Should have had a wicked fever, though. Maybe that's not enough to attract attention at this particular ER.
And that's another category of people that should be included in the protocol I suggested above. People who are perfectly happy to let someone who is really having a heart attack die due to a delay in care, so THEY can get to the front of the line and get treatment for their sort throat. They should be arrested, given due process in court, and then put on a permanent nationwide "no treatment" list. If a private charity wants to provide them with medical care, fine. But the taxpayers and private insurance premium-payers shouldn't be forced to.
I took someone to an emergency room several years ago. There was a woman there moaning and groaning. Later a young woman came screaming about stomach pain. After a while I asked why they weren’t being treated. The nurses told me that they came in all of the time with fake pains hoping to get free drugs/dope. If one of these people came in with a real pain I’m sure they would have to wait because of their previous behavior.