Patient dies after being left in chair 22 hours
RALEIGH, North Carolina (AP) -- A mental patient died after workers at a North Carolina hospital left him in a chair for 22 hours without feeding him or helping him use the bathroom, said federal officials who have threatened to cut off the facility's funding.
The state sent a team Tuesday to help Cherry Hospital in Goldsboro draft new procedures to ensure patients receive proper care.
An investigator's report released Monday found that 50-year-old Steven Sabock died in April after he choked on medication and was left sitting in a chair for close to a day at the facility about 50 miles southeast of Raleigh. Surveillance video showed hospital staff watching television and playing cards a few feet away.
Federal officials have threatened to cut off funding because of Sabock's death and a report that a physician punched a patient after the teen bit the doctor.
Department of Health and Human Services spokesman Tom Lawrence said the state team also may investigate what, if any, disciplinary action should be taken after Sabock's death.
Lawrence said the Sabock incident is isolated but that officials are concerned.
"It's not the kind of thing that we in our wildest dreams would expect to happen in our hospitals -- in our wildest nightmares, I guess," Lawrence said.
The investigation released Monday said Sabock died in April after Cherry Hospital nurses left him unattended in a chair and did not feed him or help him to the bathroom.
The report said Sabock sat, unattended, in the room for four work shifts. The report also found that Sabock, formerly of Roanoke Rapids, ate nothing the day he died and had little food in the three days preceding his death.
The state has until August 23 to file a report with the Centers for Medicaid & Medicare Services detailing what changes officials are making, Lawrence said.
If the center rejects the report, federal funds will be cut off beginning September 1, Lawrence said.
Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Dempsey Benton said in a statement that nurses may be reassigned to provide more patient supervision. Officials are also considering better ways to manage staff resources, he said.
A patient in New York died in June after she waited in a hospital's mental ward waiting area for nearly 24 hours. Security video showed her writhing on the floor. It was nearly an hour before someone else flagged down a staff member who got help for the unresponsive woman
Here I go again!
Surveillance video showed hospital staff watching television and playing cards a few feet away.
The report said Sabock sat, unattended, in the room for four work shifts. The report also found that Sabock, formerly of Roanoke Rapids, ate nothing the day he died and had little food in the three days preceding his death.
Department of Health and Human Services spokesman Tom Lawrence said the state team also may investigate what, if any, disciplinary action should be taken after Sabock's death.
Now for my two cents.
Boy it would be really easy for me if I were running the place. First I would fire the personnel that were watching t.v. and playing cards. Then I would make sure they could never work in the health care industry again ANYWHERE! EVER! My god, when you have to leave a loved one in any kind of health care facility, be it a hospital, a mental hospital, long term etc. We as loved ones of those should be able to do so with the knowledge they are being cared for.
REPRIMAND?
How dare these T.V. watching, card playing mother fuckers (of four (4) shifts) I might add, even get the chance for reprimand. This is the biggest insult to all the hard working healthcare personnel out there that work sooo hard to take care of our loved ones. This just sucks!
I am sooo pissed right now just writing this I may end up in a health care facility with a heart attack. Please, let me, PLEASE, go to one where they allow card playing and T.V. watching because I really don't want to bother anyone. I just want to be left alone in a chair with no food, water, bathroom utilities, and for GOD SAKE'S I don't want any care. I just want to go to the hospital so that I can be ignored.
And people wonder why our health care here is soooo expensive.
After all it costs a lot to get Direct T.V. and a good deck of cards these days.................
I truly feel for this family.
There is no excuse for any of this!!!
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