Shocking Neglect at NY Hospital


Early last week we learned of the death of Esmin Green at Kings County Hospital in New York. Green spent 24 hours in the lobby waiting to receive treatment prior to her death. The hospital had been sued in 2007 and was investigated by the US Attorney's Civil Rights Office in Brooklyn prior to Green's death on June 19.

Surveillance tapes from the hospital show two different security guards spotted Green prone on the floor and did nothing. They have been fired, along with four other staff members.

Green, 49, keels over out of her chair at 5:32a.m., according to the time stamp on the video. She had been sitting about 3feet from an observation window. Two other patients were in the room.

The video then shows Green lying facedown on the floor, her legs splayed, when a security guard strolls by at 5:53 a.m., looks at her for about 20 seconds and then walks away. She is writhing on the floor, thrashing her legs, about 6 a.m., when her medical chart contends she was "awake, up and about and went to the bathroom."

Green rolls on her back at 6:04a.m. She stops moving at 6:08. Then, two minutes later a security guard pushes his chair into camera view. He never gets out of the chair, but looks at Green and scoots away. A female patient who was in and out of the room finally brings a clinic staffer to check the woman and a crash cart is summoned.

The medical chart claims she was "sitting quietly in [the] waiting room" at 6:20 a.m., although she was already dead. The cause of death is still under investigation.

This article from the New York Daily News offers further details.

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