NYC Man Dies In ER After Waiting Eight Hours For Help, ‘Found Stiff, Blue And Cold’

[Purveyor]

A New York man was found dead in a hospital emergency room, where he had waited for hours to see a doctor.

Hospital officials confirmed that 30-year-old Jon Verrier was found dead eight hours after he arrived at Saint Barnabas Hospital in West Bronx seeking treatment for a rash.

“He was found stiff, blue and cold,” an employee told ABC News. “He died because (there’s) not enough staff to take care of the number of patients we see each day. We need more staff at Saint Barnabas.”

Officials said Verrier checked into the ER at 10 p.m. Jan. 19 and was found about 6:40 a.m. the following morning.

A hospital spokesman said Verrier was registered, assessed and told to wait in the ER for a doctor, but he returned for some reason to sit in the waiting room.

The spokesman said Verrier’s name was called two or three times but he never answered, and he was apparently still alive when a security guard made a routine check at 2 a.m. to chase away homeless people.

MORE..

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/01/27/nyc-man-dies-in-er-after-waiting-eight-hours-for-help-found-stiff-blue-and-cold/

What a fucking country we have become...

[Warpy]

1. My guess last night was bacterial meningitis

although anaphylactic shock is a possibility. The hospital had better hope it's the latter since the former will make them the epicenter of an epidemic.

I know what hospital waiting rooms are like, it's hard to tell patients from family and people who just came in to get warm and they're usually huge and always packed. Friends and families are useful and would probably have alerted the staff that Mr. Verrier was in serious trouble.

It sucks that staffing is so piss poor that personnel can't be spared to do rounds in the waiting room in case someone has gone unresponsive.

[frazzled]

2. We waited five and a half hours once ...

for my husband to be seen. A hematoma on his hip, originally the size of an orange, had swollen up to the size of a grapefruit and his entire leg had turned bright red. The doctor told us to get straight to the emergency room.

After checking in and waiting for more than five hours, we finally went up to make a little noise. My husband said, "do you want me to pull down my pants so you can see?" That got some action, and we were sent in. When the staff arrived in the examining room to look at it, the nurse actually looked away, gagging, and said "ewwww," while the doctor proclaimed, "Holy Shit!" (No kidding, he actually said that.) It was a bad staph infection.

My husband could have been dead like this man had the infection spread to an artery and gotten into his circulatory system—that can shut down all your organs in a very short time. Fortunately, it missed it. But they admitted him to the hospital immediately for treatment.

The problem probably wasn't the staff; it's the triage—determining the order and priority of treatment. We actually saw a young woman who came in after us with a cut she'd gotten on her finger in the office get taken in before us. Unless you're bleeding from a gunshot wound, you'd better make a lot of noise if you think you are in serious condition.

And this is why people who are not seriously injured or undergoing a life-threatening illness should NOT go to the emergency room. It prevents people who really need the help from getting it. Sorry to say, but this happens with some frequency.

I'm very very sorry about this young man. It's tragic.