Some Hospitals Call 911 to Save Their Patients

Some Hospitals Call 911 to Save Their Patients

www.wilmingtonstar.com

Should a hospital be able to handle a medical emergency?

The answer may seem self-evident. But patients at some hospitals may find the staff resorting to what someone might do at home in a crisis: call 911 for an ambulance.

That happened recently in Texas, where a 44-year-old man named Steve Spivey developed breathing problems after spine surgery. No physician was working there when the staff first recognized he was in trouble. They phoned 911, and he was taken to a nearby full-service hospital, where he was pronounced dead a short time later.

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CNN has been running spots on this most of the morning. Some very disturbing information is being revealed now doctors are alledged to be starting their own specialty hospitals only to have them run into trouble as was the case here and elese where. Note the patient died at the other hospital as did one other lady.

What I would like to know is where was the doctor or doctors.

www.wilmingtonstar.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Many small hospitals don't have trauma centers, or drs that are on scene 24/7. They're mostly care facilites, or places where they transfer patients to bigger hospitals.

Notice THIS part of the article:

that are set up to specialize in certain types of procedures like heart surgery, back operations and hip replacements.

For example, small surgical hospitals may not have separate emergency facilities or, as in the Texas case, a doctor on site at all times during a patient’s recovery.

www.wilmingtonstar.com.../20070402/ZNYT01/704020416/1002/business


This is not a full service hospital. This is a hospital that only treats certain conditions, and nothing else. While run by drs, they undoubtedly don't haev a 24/7 dr coverage, since MOST patients going through those procedures can be treated by nurses, or won't need any kind of extra special care after the procedure. A fairly rare number of patients will develop complications, such as this one, but over all probably 98%+ of their patients go through this facility with no problems.

[edit on 4/7/2007 by Zaphod58]

As I was listening to the story on the news, it seems that they have done plenty of times during last year.

I feel that the facility should not be called a hospital if it doesn't have a residence doctor 24 hours a day.

What a shame.

Interesting. It's pretty common for a patient to calling 9-1-1 because they aren't happy with the service in the ER at the hospital and feel they're waiting too long. Never heard of a hospital calling 9-1-1 simply because they have no Dr on staff. I guess it would depend on what area of the country and how rural of a setting it is.

Of course hospitals call for ambulance transfers all the time even in the urban and suburban areas. A good example is if someone is self transported with stabbing or gun shot wounds ... most hospitals aren't setup to handle that kind of trauma, so they will stabilize the patients and have an ambulance or helicopter transport the patient off to a larger hospital.

SmallMindsBigIdeas,

Yes but usually when the call is made to the hospital from the ambulance already the hospital will get ready for treatment or either transfer.

Hey, I watch a lot of real live medical issues programs on the health channel.

As was pointed out in the article, this was NOT a full service hospital. It was a specialized facility for limited treatment of certain conditions. They didn't have a dr on 24/7 because they're only treating certain things, and they're not going to have a trauma come racing in at 2am Sunday morning.

Originally posted by Zaphod58
As was pointed out in the article, this was NOT a full service hospital. It was a specialized facility for limited treatment of certain conditions.

What difference does that make they were dealing in some pretty serious procedures here this is uncalled for. You can try and defend them if you want but I find it appalling.

I'm not trying to defend anyone. But it seems you have an agenda going on with all your articles and comments. Unless you work or have family that work in the medical industry you won't know what's going on. If the procedure was serious enough it wouldn't be going on in this clinic. It would be going on in a full hospital with drs on staff 24/7. The procedures going on in this clinic would be more along the lines of angioplasty, and minor heart procedures. The patients probably got much better care here than they would have in a full hospital as well. But you're right, let's just close down all these little clinics, and we'll let the HMOs send everyone to a full hospital where they'll be lucky to get 5 minutes with a dr, who doesn't give a damn about anything but filling his quota.

While there is no satisfactory remedy for Steve Spivey, the hospital is now closed.

West Texas Hospital to close

West Texas Hospital shuts doors today

Their website is closed:

www.westtexashospital.com...

This form of critical response is inappropriate for a "hospital" but is the standard of care for most surgery centers, clinics, and professional offices.

The litigation has undoubtedly "only begun."

Originally posted by Mirthful Me
While there is no satisfactory remedy for Steve Spivey, the hospital is now closed.

Good it does not deserve to remain open. My former cardiologist opened one of those speciality clinics that specialized in heart procedures, with several doctors and they had to close down within the first year because of at least one wrongful death lawsuit perhaps two. Fortunately I did not follow him to that facility but my current doctor told me all about it. He did not appear to be very impressed or that is how it appeared by what he said about the clinic.

My brother lives in North Dakota. He told me a story about how a man was in the ER in this one hospital and was just left in the hall. No one was around. After a while the man called 911 and told the emergency people that he was in the hall of the hospital and that it was like he had been left and everyone went to lunch.

I don't know if that's true or not .... but that's the Urban Legend going around his town in North Dakota.

Originally posted by Zaphod58
But it seems you have an agenda going on with all your articles and comments.

Haaaaa if you are still posting at my age (approaching 70) I am willing to bet someone your age will come along and say the same to you. It comes with age you learn them from the experiences of real life

Unless you work or have family that work in the medical industry you won't know what's going on.

Well actually I have more then three members of the family working in hospitals and two retired neighbors who were nurses, so yes I do know some about hospitals but not all.

They do have a habit of talking shop at family gatherings and I hear all kinds of stuff. I will bring it up tomorrow just to see what they have to say well that is unless they bring it up before me which I do expect to happen.

----

FLYERS

where in North Dakota did you hear that? I recall a friend from Minot telling us about that but he did not say where it happened

I watched this on CNN yesterday, and I have to say, this is one of
the times I agree with Shots, it is appaling.

In my opinion any facility that does major surgeries should have at
least two doctors on call 24/7 and the abilitie to treat anything short
of extremely rare medical cases.


I do not believe these kinds of places should be allowed to exist.

I'm glad this has come to light. If I go to a facility for a surgical procedure, I want them to have the facilities to deal with any and all complications and contingencies, without having to appeal to outside help.



[edit on 2007/4/7 by GradyPhilpott]

I've been a nurse for quite a while and have worked at these surgery centers. They're nice. Usually just get easy surgeries that mend well and have a short hospital stay. Complications are rare and usually easily treated. Mainly pain relief and waitress type service, ie: nurse, could you get me another bowl of jello?

In order to be called a "hospital" (as opposed to clinic) you have to have an emergency room. It's usually about the size of my closet and the best emergency equipment in it is the telephone (to call 911). Clinics can't perform bigger surgeries. Surgical hospitals don't perform BIG surgeries like heart transplants and such...lot of tummy tucks, hysterectomies, "medium level" surgeries. Clinics can do wound debridements and even vasectomies but those are under local anesthesia and take about 20 minutes. Anything longer than that requiring more than local anesthesia needs to be in a "hospital."

Some people do wander in at 2:00 in the morning (usually drunks) wanting something for their headache and we usually try to divert them to a bigger hospital. If they throw a fit, we'll treat their piddly-assed problem and send them on their way. The emergency room is really more of a bandaid station although it does have a defibrillator, oxygen and that ever handy telephone to call for backup.

Surgical centers have doctors on call 24/7 but if the emergency is life-threatening/imminently deadly, then the on call doctor can't do much and will tell the nurse screaming on the phone at him to call 911. If I were having a moderately complicated surgery I would prefer to have it in a surgical center where the staff is instructed to kiss the patients butts. The bigger hospitals treat you like a gall stone surgery that's bothering them by having the audacity to be sick on a day they have to work.

Closing is the standard operating procedure is cases like this where these doctor-owned surgical centers have a lawsuit. They usually have about 5 doctors (or so) and even 1 multi-million dollar lawsuit can be ruinous to all involved. There will always be someone who doesn't respond as expected to meds or surgery and it's always unfortunate. It needs to be investigated, of course, but sometimes everyone can do everything right and still get an unexpected outcome. That's what an investigation will determine. The hospital may re-open if the investigation determines that it was just one of those unfortunate events in which nobody is at fault.

I've worked in "full-service" hospitals and even trauma centers where people still die. Happens every day. When I'm ready to get blackballed forever from nursing, I'll write an expose on hospitals but, trust me when I say, surgical centers are your best bet for having surgery.

I find it absolutely inexcusable that any sort of clinic, hospital, "doctor's office", or whatever you want to call it, that provides in-patient care would not have a doctor on the premises 24/7. How that is even legal is beyond me. There is more regulation in a French Quarter body piercing shop apparently that a clinic that has inpatients, who after surgery do not have a doctor on call for any complications that may arise.

And if they do allow these kind of "shops" to be set up, then they do not deserve the title of Hospital or Clinic, imo.

Very good find, Shots.

They DO have doctors on call but even god-like doctors have to sleep sometime.

Originally posted by whitewave
They DO have doctors on call but even god-like doctors have to sleep sometime.

Is'nt that why there are night shifts and day shifts though, I mean why
could'nt one set of doctors work the nightshift and another set work the
dayshift?

" It will be a great day in history when schools and hospitals get all the funding they need, and the military has to hold a cake sale to buy bombs ''

disgraceful, why cant hosptials get enough funding to properly look after its citizens?

Hows about Cheney donate 6months wages from all this dealings in Iraq to the hospitals in his country. If he's that noble and rightoues he should have no quams about doing so.