Free Republic

A California woman says Veterans Administration hospital guards beat her husband to death after he waited four hours for dialysis. Norma Montano says her husband of 44 years, Jonathan, died of a stroke on June 11, 2011, after he was beaten and had his carotid artery stomped by VA guards. Montano says the hospital also lied to her about what happened to her husband. Montano’s son and daughter are also plaintiffs in the suit. Montano says he husband was tired of waiting, but when he tried to leave and go to another facility, he “was told by the nursing staff...

The director of the Phoenix VA hospital received an $8,500 pay bonus last month even as allegations of 40 deaths resulting from excessive wait times for care were being investigated, according to the Weekly Standard. VA Secretary Eric Shinseki is reportedly responsible for signing off on performance ratings and rewards, but the department’s chairman Jeff Miller said the bonus was the result of “an administrative error.” The Weekly Standard reports: Sharon Helman, the director of the Phoenix Veterans Affairs Health Care System, ”got an $8,500 bonus last month while there was an open [inspector general] investigation into Phoenix,” Chairman Miller...

When the Obama administration pushed for over the counter sales of the Plan B drug, which may cause an abortion in some circumstances, pro-life advocates feared this kind of thing would happen. A local news station in Colorado has discovered that a children’s hospital with giving the Plan B drug to 12-year-old girls and all without parental consent. As Fox 21 reports: motherdaughter6bOne Colorado Springs clinic is offering kids as young as 12 access to the Plan B pill without any parental consent. That clinic is a division of Children’s Hospital Colorado in Aurora and offers services to 12 to...

Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki will testify Thursday for the first time since a burgeoning scandal broke on allegedly deadly health care delays in the VA system, as he faces calls for his resignation and demands that the VA immediately improve the way it treats America's vets. According to prepared remarks, Shinseki will say the alleged problems in the system are unacceptable and if substantiated he will take “responsible and timely action” to remedy the situation. “I am personally angered and saddened by any adverse consequence that a veteran might experience while in, or as a result of, our care,”...

Whistleblowers say officials have been destroying evidence at the Phoenix Veterans Affairs hospital where at least 40 patients died from delays, despite requests from Congress to preserve records. Dr. Katherine Mitchell came forward to the Arizona Republic with records that show the hospital was using a secret list to hide the long wait times veterans faced. According to the Republic, Mitchell sent the documents to the paper after receiving a call from a coworker that evidence was being destroyed.

Say they want to stop babies from crying and disturbing othersNurses at a public pediatrics hospital in Saudi Arabia were again caught sticking an adhesive tape on babies’ mouths to stop them from crying. The hospital in the western town of Taif hit headlines last year when some newborns and other ill babies were seen with adhesive tapes stuck on their mouths. Some of them had their dummies stuck inside their mouths. “They have done it again. It is clear they are doing it again because no measures were taken against them by the authorities in the previous case,” Sabq...

"An elderly blind veteran crying in pain spent four hours and 45 minutes in the emergency room of the VA Medical Center in North Las Vegas before seeing a doctor in October, but federal inspectors said in a report Wednesday that such long waits were not unusual for patients at the hospital." (snip) "Niccum died on Nov. 15 at a local hospice after a bout with a colon disorder. The Navy veteran had racked up 5,000 volunteer service hours helping veterans and staff at VA facilities."

GREENSBURG (KDKA) — Greensburg City police are expected to file charges as early as Tuesday against a woman from Youngwood who was leading two lives at Excela Health Westmoreland Hospital. She was not immediately identified by name. She was not only a patient at the hospital, but she was allegedly selling heroin from her hospital room. Jennifer Miele, Excela’s Vice President of Marketing, said staffers in the ICU saw numerous visitors coming and going, spending only a moment or two with the patient before leaving. “What the staff was noticing in our Intensive Care Unit, was that many visitors were...

ESSEX, UK, April 16, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A UK hospital has apologized to a woman four years after doctors and staff let her 22-week premature son die in her arms within an hour of being born, despite the mother’s urgent pleas for help. Tracy Godwin, who in 2010 held her newborn son Tom for 46 minutes before he ceased breathing, said she was never told about the hospital’s policy stating that babies born before 23 weeks would be left to die. But the hospital has not indicated that it has changed its policy, only that it now has new guidelines...

Earlier in March, Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus revised how to count the size of the U.S.’s battle force inventory. The battle force inventory is important because it measures the size of the U.S. combat fleet. The new definition will make the U.S. combat fleet look larger than it really is. This provides a political shield against legitimate concerns that the Navy is shrinking. Ships included in the battle force inventory had been “warships capable of contributing to combat operations” or ships that contribute “directly to Navy warfighting or support missions.” Aircraft carriers, destroyers, amphibious ships, and submarines are...

Erin Youngerberg learned in 2010 that she was facing a possible death sentence. “I had a mole on my back that started to grow,’’ she told The Post. “Dermatologists removed it and said it was nothing. But they called back and said it was a form of melanoma.’’ And it was the worst possible type of the skin cancer — the kind that causes tumors to grow all over the body. But she has new hope — thanks to a remarkable drug called Yervoy, developed at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center using millions of dollars donated by billionaire David Koch.

The Koch brothers are at it again. Their right-wing political Panzer Division descended on a New York City hospital over the weekend to protest (!) the addition of a new ambulatory care center. What the hell, Koch bros? Why not pro-America?Sorry. That’s not quite right. In fact, it was the New York State Nurses’ Association, the NAACP New York State Conference, and SEIU Local 1199, among others, who marched on the soon-to-be-built David H. Koch Center at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, which was funded in part by a $100 million donation from the man one prominent liberal recently predicted would...

AFSCME union officials posted the names of employees who opted out of the union at a Michigan hospital. EAG News reported: A top labor official told MLive recently that the public posting of names of union members who opted out of the union serves as a membership renewal reminder to other union members. Lawrence Roehrig, international vice president of AFSCME and secretary treasurer of Michigan AFSCME Council 25, made his comments in an MLive story that appeared after Michigan Capitol Confidential broke the news that AFSCME Hurley Medical Center Employees Local 1603 posted the names of workers who exercised their...

A regulation requiring abortion clinics to maintain transfer agreements with local hospitals is paying off in Ohio, with at least three major abortion clinics unable to arrange such agreements, including a Planned Parenthood. Those clinics have each applied for variances, which would allow them to continue operating even though they cannot meet the requirements of the law. The notorious late-term abortionist, Martin Haskell, is the owner of two of the embattled clinics in Dayton and in the Cincinnati suburb of Sharonville. No hospital will extend privileges to Haskell. In January, his Women’s Med Center in Sharonville was ordered closed after...

The last time Lou Pelletier spoke with his 15-year-old daughter was Feb. 14 — Valentine’s Day. For this father of four, though, the day held a different meaning for his youngest valentine: It marked one year since she was taken and placed in a psychiatric ward against her parents’ will. “We need help,” Lou Pelletier told TheBlaze in an exclusive interview, explaining why he made the decision to break a judge’s gag order and talk about the situation. “I’m trying to save my daughter’s life,” he said. “While still being able to live,” Jessica, one of Justina’s older sisters, added....

(Ballot) Initiative No. 39 seeks to limit nonprofit hospital executive compensation to 15 times the annual wage of the lowest paid employee. Current law sets no cap on compensation, but rather, it is considered reasonable if it is comparable to similarly situated executives, even those at for profit health organizations, according to a summary of the measure. The measure would limit the share the hospital may contribute when the compensation is paid by a parent corporation, health system or combination. It requires annual public reports and authorizes civil penalties for violation.

My mother was transported to the hospital last night with congestive heart failure. She is doing better but I'd still appreciate your prayers. Believe me, she is nothing like me. She's actually nice. I'm far too paranoid to go splashing our family name publicly on FR but if any Jews or Noachides are willing to davvnen/say tehillim for her with the proper formula please PM me and I will give you the information. Thank you all.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said on Tuesday it is working with the three manufacturers of intravenous saline solutions commonly used to hydrate hospital patients to address a shortage caused by a spike in demand. To cope with the shortage, healthcare providers are using substitute products such as oral hydration fluids or smaller IV saline bags with slower drip rates when appropriate, said Bona Benjamin, director of medication use quality improvement for the American Society of Health System Pharmacists. "We have heard from our members all over the country that the shortage is serious," Benjamin said. "People are able...

A Texas hospital may not appeal a judge’s decision late Friday to allow a husband’s bid to remove his “brain dead” pregnant wife from life support, an action that would end the life of his own unborn child. Marlise Munoz collapsed in her home last November from an apparent blood clot in her lungs when she was 14 weeks pregnant with her second child. Her husband and other family members have asked the John Peter Smith Hospital in Ft. Worth to remove Marlise from life support after they were told she was “brain dead.” Ending life support would also end...

Classifying Medicare patients admitted to hospitals can be classified as "observation status" or "inpatient." The bill that seniors will ultimately end up with depends on this classification. If they are in need of rehabilitation in a nursing home after hospitalization and the classification of "observation status" was applied to their records at the hospital, Medicare does not pay for the nursing home.