Sick, Elderly Black Man Kicked Out Of Atlanta-Area Hospital With Tubes Still Attached

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

https://www.blackenterprise.com/black-man-with-tubes-kicked-out-of-hospital-because-his-medicare-ended/?test=prebid


A 68-year-old man was kicked out of Piedmont Rockdale Hospital in Conyers, GA, last week, because the hospital staff was concerned about payment for his treatment.

According to WSB in Atlanta, the unidentified man was rescued by Rockdale County Deputy Chief Scott Freeman, after a good Samaritan called 911. A hospital employee confirmed that the staff had dressed the patient and walked him out of the building, leaving him right outside of the emergency room exit.

When police arrived, the patient still had medical tubes attached, including a catheter. He had a fever and elevated heart rate, a urinary tract infection, and signs of sepsis. The Rockdale staffer explained that the decision to put the man out was made because he had been at the facility for 35 days and Medicare would not be covering any more of his treatment.

“Common sense dictates that you do not treat human beings the way that we’re seeing in this particular case,” Freeman told WSB. “(He was) literally ejected out to the sidewalk with no help whatsoever. I think it’s inhumane. He was clearly incoherent. That’s just not how we treat people here in this city or this country.”

*snip*

[ck4829]

1. World's Greatest Healthcare System (tm) at it again

[Tommymac]

21. Yup. Death by Spreadsheet.

Business as usual in our private Health 'Care' system.

The hospital exec must face criminal prosecution for attempted manslaughter, or felonious carelessness.

But doubt we will ever hear about this again unless folks on the internets keep at it.

[Duncan Grant]

53. Otherwise known as: Atrocity

a·troc·i·ty
/əˈträsədē/

noun: atrocity; plural noun: atrocities

an extremely wicked or cruel act, typically one involving physical violence or injury.

[DemocraticPatriot]

63. Yes, 'death panels' were ALWAYS a Republican invention.

Which they are still using.

[IronLionZion]

29. We have the highest prices

and ration care by cost

[CaliforniaPeggy]

2. Unbelievably cruel to treat this man so inhumanely.

I am sickened by this hospital's actions.

[onecaliberal]

3. He was in the hospital for 33 days and still had fever and was incoherent?

What the hell treatment did the man receive? This is so unfuckingbelievable but yet, not.

[Avis]

15. incoherent and they offer him options that he refused????

Unbelievable that they think he could decide with a fever and sepsis.

[LisaL]

27. And what did they think he was going to do once out of the hospital?

With fever and sepsis? Looks like they didn't even take him far. He is right outside emergency room exit.

[EarlG]

4. "That's just not how we treat people here in this city or this country."

Apparently it is...

[tulipsandroses]

11. It is. Patient dumping is still a thing

I don’t know about this gentleman’s case, but too often, corporate decides who stays and goes. They do this even if the provider does not want to discharge the patient. Can’t pay? You need to go so we can put someone in that bed that can pay. Or try to force the provider’s hand.

[Dustlawyer]

22. I tool my brother who was totally disabled and on Medicare/Medicaid, to the ER.

He was not coherent and extremely sick. The ER doctor was trying to discharge him even though he couldn’t remember his name or birthday. I threatened to sue and she replied that the hospital board made the decision. I gave her my business card and told her I was suing her individually and the hospital if they didn’t keep him. I added that I would go to the local news about them patient dumping. She came back and told me he would only get one day. Once admitted a different doctor kept him in until he died 21 days later. That doctor couldn’t believe they were going to send him home. I told him it was a shame that people without a lawyer for a brother would get booted.

I went and gave the TV interview anyway after he passed!

[onecaliberal]

50. That is precisely how we treat POOR people.

Last edited Tue Oct 19, 2021, 07:44 PM - Edit history (1)

The wealthy and well connected have the top tier level of care. Like everything else. You get what you can pay for. Eff the poor, that is the American way.

[I_UndergroundPanther]

59. Fuck privatization

Universal healthcare now. No more special insurance for rich people.

[Sogo]

5. That's outrageous and, I would think, illegal!

I thought hospitals had to take patients no matter their ability to pay. Isn't that why illegals use ERs all the time? What has changed?

[Kali]

28. " Isn't that why illegals use ERs all the time?"

[Maru Kitteh]

45. Right? WTAF.

Unreal.

[Haggard Celine]

30. Oh no.

They will 'stabilize' you in the ER, but if you don't have insurance or the ability to pay cash, you're usually put out.

[Grins]

6. "Cue Lee Greenwood!!"

[MarcA]

13. +1000 n/t

[dchill]

16. Indeed.

No hit wonder.

[NurseJackie]

40. Well...

... "at least he knows he's free."

(I fucking hate that fucking song. A Republican earworm that's just as bad as Kars-4-Kids.)

[rogue emissary]

7. So what were they doing the 35 days Medicare was paying?

I'm not a medical professional so I can't speak to his conditions. Got to wonder how they couldn't treat his issues in a months time.

[woodsprite]

10. A few wks ago I had a UTI go septic. 5 days in the hospital on IV antibiotics and I was good to go

home on oral antibiotics for an additional week. I'm also diabetic and a cancer patient. Sounds like he wasn't even being treated at all. If he was, they probably didn't do cultures to see exactly what antibiotic would be the most effective.

[LisaL]

26. That's what Bill Clinton just had as far as I can tell.

They should have been able to treat patient in the OP during those 35 days he was there.

[rogue emissary]

19. Exactly, I had a major issue and was out in under a week.

[ToxMarz]

20. Not familiar with Medicare as I'm not on it yet

But why does it limit treatment. If someone gets cancer on Medicare, do they only get 35 days of treatment?

[rogue emissary]

23. Same here but this sounds like Medicare fraud in top of medical malpractice.

[Ilsa]

8. Did anyone consider how badly he could hurt himself trying to remove his catheter?

The doctors had been "treating" him for 35 days? With what? Licorice sticks, voodoo dolls, prayer, and animal sacrifices?

The hospital employees who turned him out should be prosecuted for mistreating the elderly.

The administration, who has a committee making these decisions, should be prosecuted as well, at least as accessories.

This is why I always tell friends to make certain they have an advocate with them if they need to be admitted.

[intheflow]

24. Agreed. This could definitely fall under elder abuse.

You'd think the hospital would be more concerned with potential legal costs should the man, the family, or the state choose to sue.

[Trailrider1951]

9. Apparently, they kept him as long as he was a cash cow

And then discarded him when he no longer served that purpose. As long as he was adding to the bottom line, he got some "care". "The greatest health care in the world", my ass! And after 35 days, they couldn't cure a common UTI???

[Act_of_Reparation]

46. Yeah, no.

Piedmont is a non-profit organization. They aren't in the business of bilking people to pad their bottom line because, well, there is no bottom line. Also, Medicare and Medicaid don't reimburse particularly high (hell, in many situations they reimburse at a loss)--so I don't know that even for-profit health care systems would see this guy as a particularly strong source of revenue.

The issue is provisioning health care costs money, and in order to keep providing health care even non-profits have to remain solvent. As long as that's the case, these decisions are going to have to be made.

It's a national policy problem, not a hospital or a doctor problem.

[Marcuse]

12. Another method of voter suppression. I'm sure Governor Kemp will get to the bottom of this.

[NCjack]

14. Calling all lawyers in Conyers and surrounding area: get the police report

and offer your service.

[Whiskeytide]

18. Conyers is a very scary place. A friend lived there...

… for a couple of years a decade or so back. Black families are simply not welcome there. Period. Many Atlanta lawyers won’t practice there. Any jury of these people would certainly find in favor of the hospital on these facts. Likely would applaud its actions.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

33. Change of venue. . . . nt

[Whiskeytide]

38. That's a lot easier said ...

… than done. You can’t file a motion to change the venue because the jury looks like most of them are backwoods, racists assholes. And you’re assuming the elected judge would be sympathetic to your request initially. He or she wouldn’t be.

You might be able to file a case in Federal Court if you could meet the diversity requirements, but otherwise you’re probably stuck in Conyers.

There are just pockets in the US where justice is pretty relative. Conyers is definitely one of them.

[Celerity]

47. The racial makeup of the city was 24.3% White, 55.8% African American, 0.2% Native American, 1.4%

Asian, 0.5% from other races, and 1.5% from two or more races. Hispanics or Latinos of any race were 16.3% of the population.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conyers,_Georgia#Demographics

Black families are simply not welcome there. Period.

[Whiskeytide]

49. Surprising. It must have changed a lot in the last 10-15 years. n/t

[AZLD4Candidate]

17. Amazing how uncaring and unfeeling our health care system is

At least in China there is no pretense...if you don't pay first you don't see the doctor in the hospital

Which hospital bureaucrat thought this was a perfectly acceptable move that would garner positive PR points?

Did any nurses or medical staff help throw this man out, or was it all administrative and security?

[NullTuples]

37. That doesn't *seem* like the communism republicans talk about?

[AZLD4Candidate]

48. I own a home there, my wife is Chinese, and I lived there for 12 years

I know. The Communism they say and the Communism that exists are two different things.

[NullTuples]

52. That's what I've heard from friends who grew up in or near Hong Kong pre-1999

They've provided an interesting perspective, especially the ones who had family in HK and in China, and a decade or two later have of course still kept in touch or visit regularly. Another grew up in northern China and really did not consider themselves communist at all.

Not to mention that objectively entire swaths of China's economy are based very much on Capitalism or funded by it.

Honestly from my POV Communism is not supposed to be a centrally controlled concentration of power that creates multimillionaires or higher.

[AZLD4Candidate]

54. Mao cracked down on that

As he said "I didn't foster a revolution to replace one group of elites with another group of elites"

[NullTuples]

57. And yet...here we are in 2021

At last count China has 5.3 million millionaires and 1058 billionaires.

[AZLD4Candidate]

58. That movenebt started with Deng Xiaoping's reforms, who stated that being rich

was what all Chinese people should strive to be and the CCP that has gone from being communist to fascist (meaning the government and business/industry have combined into one good little exclusive club that works to better the State at the expense of the Chinese non-party members).

[KS Toronado]

25. One more reason why we need a national health care system

where doctors and hospitals get paid for everyone they treat for as long as they need treatment,
instead of basing your treatment on how good of insurance you have or don't have.

[ShazzieB]

31. I found the hospital's website.

Right on the front page, there's a "contact us" link.

https://www.piedmont.org/about-piedmont-healthcare/contact-us

There's a nice little form there. Easy as pie. Just saying.

[knightmaar]

32. FACT CHECK: Mostly False. "That's just not how we treat people here in this city or this country."

[ShazzieB]

34. Those pictures are absolutely heart breaking.

This article has more details: https://www.cbs46.com/news/conyers-police-department-calls-out-piedmont-hospital-for-inhumane-behavior/article_021c286a-2e29-11ec-9c66-ab64d7b2dce1.html

Something tells me this is going to get a ton of publicity. I hope everybody involved in the decision to put that poor old man out of the street in that condition is sweating bullets right now.

[tblue37]

35. "That's just not how we treat people here in this city or this country."

Oh, yes it is. Most definitely, yes.

[Patton French]

36. WTF? (n/t)

[Hekate]

39. Might want to check the corporate owner behind the name of the hospital...

There was at least one in Los Angeles caught dumping an old lady on Skid Row in the dark of night — white, before you ask — in her nighty, with tubes still in. They claimed she’d be getting social services in that location.

The name on the hospital was Methodist or Presbyterian, something mainstream and respectable that makes you do more than a double-take when you read a story like this. . Turns out the hospital had been sold to a for-profit chain, who naturally never bothered to change the formerly-trusted name.

The purchase of community hospitals by for-profit entities got well underway during the BushCheney admin.

[TxGuitar]

41. "That's just not how we treat people here in this city or this country"

That absolutely is how we treat people in this country.

[Celerity]

43. +10000000000000000

[Javaman]

42. and if he were white? would they have done the same thing?

I seriously doubt it.

There is so much going on with this it's hard to know where to begin but I'll start with, "first do not harm".

[tulipsandroses]

56. Yes. Maybe they wouldn't send him out with tubes hanging

But if he ran out of days. Then yes. Unfortunately, when I worked in a hospital, race, didn’t matter. Corporate only cared about green. That’s not to say there were not disparities in how people were treated. The great equalizer was whether your insurance covered more days or not.
The police was even called once when a patient refused to leave after he was discharged.

[LuckyCharms]

44. I try to put myself in that man's shoes.

Just imagine how he felt.

Feeling like total dogshit, tubes coming out of him, no advocate there to help him navigate the situation.

He probably just sat down and waited to die.

This is the kind of shit that makes me want to throttle people.

No words for this kind of treatment.

This could happen to anyone, right now. And even if you have money to pay, circumstances can turn on a dime.

Fuck that hospital with a rusty meat hook.

Furious.

[Bristlecone]

51. Best healthcare in the world!

Just disgusting.

[BeckyDem]

55. America The Beautiful

Oh beautiful for heroes proved
In liberating strife
Who more than self, their country loved
And mercy more than life
America, America may God thy gold refine


But now wait a minute, I'm talking about
America, sweet America
You know, God done shed his grace on thee
He crowned thy good, yes he did, in brotherhood................

https://www.purpleheart.org/static/forms/AmericaTheBeautiful.pdf

[roamer65]

60. Meanwhile, I bet they still had useless unvaccinated fucks in the hospital.

[CottonBear]

61. That's just not how we treat people here in this city or this country."

Actually,it is how we treat people here on the USA.

FYI: I live in Georgia.

[dalton99a]

62. "At Piedmont, our purpose is to make a positive difference in every life we touch."

Too bad whoever wrote that didn't get Covid and die

Fucking disgusting and barbaric