Is there a dispatcher complaint or a lawsuit coming?
By Tutor on Jun 13, 2007 in Featured, Open
While waiting in the hospital emergency room area a person passes away…
FOXNews.com - Report: 911 Operators Refused Aid to Woman Left to Die on L.A. ER Floor - Local News | News Articles | National News | US News
LOS ANGELES — New 911 tapes released Tuesday reveal that dispatchers refused to send help to a woman ignored by hospital staff as she lay dying on the floor of a Los Angeles emergency room.
Edith Isabel Rodriguez, 43, died after dispatchers on two 911 calls refused to contact paramedics or an ambulance to send her to another facility, the Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday. The second dispatcher went so far as to argue with the caller over whether it was a real emergency.
So what is to happen?
Is it really the dispatchers problem that a person IN THE HOSPITAL is not receiving the care they want? While on the face of it the comments sound crude, the person is at a hospital! What would happen if the dispatcher sent another transport (btw didn’t the hospital have an empty transport already there?) to the person and she died enroute to a different location? What would happen if the next hospital didn’t do anything either?
The bottom line is the person was transported to a place of care, it is then the hospitals responsibility to provide that care.
2 Comment(s)
By Anon on Jun 13, 2007 | Reply
Not true. The 911 dispatcher blew off a caller, argued with her, and hung up on her. As a result, someone died. He needs to be fired and sent to jail.
By JJ on Jun 17, 2007 | Reply
I think that the people involved in this whole situation all need to think about what they each did. The dispatcher and ambalance people did what they were suppose to do, pick up a sick person and drop them off at a hospital. The hospital personnel may need to be at fault but that really needs to be determined by what else was going on at the hospital, maybe nobody was available to help the lady. Then the hospital should have transported her elsewhere.