Oregon Live – Thursday, February 10, 2011:
Marin-Fuentes left his Southeast Portland home sometime between midnight and 12:30 a.m. Thursday and drove in his black Kia 1.4 miles to Portland Adventist Medical Center.
Suffering a heart attack, he crashed into a steel pillar and wall inside the first level of the hospital’s parking garage, below a sign that read “Emergency parking only” about 125 feet from the emergency room entrance.
No one noticed him for about 20 minutes, hospital officials said. But once a bystander did, the person flagged down Portland Officer Angela Luty, who was leaving the hospital’s emergency room on an unrelated traffic case.
Two minutes later, Luty and a second officer, Robert Quick, found Marin-Fuentes unresponsive and unconscious in his car in the parking garage, and began cardiopulmonary resuscitation.
Two other officers who arrived ran into the ER to seek help from medical personnel, and were told to call 9-1-1 for an ambulance, Portland Sgt. Pete Simpson said.
“Hospital said they won’t come out,” Officer Andrew Hearst radioed to dispatch. “We need to contact AMR first.”
The officers were stunned.
“It’s certainly very frustrating for the officers who are not medical professionals in a hospital parking lot, to be told they have to call for an ambulance to help this man. The officers didn’t stand there and argue, they continued CPR,” Simpson said. “But they were in disbelief.”
Sure hope the family owns the place after the suit.Entire staff present at the time should be charged with manslaughter.
Emergency room medical staff do not do carpark or drive-in medicine. There are a whole lot of reasons for that.
Captain James T. Kirk kept Dr. McCoy real close, which came in handy a lot.
I’ve been saying for years that Seventh-day Adventists are guilty of criminal indifference. But isn’t apathy the greatest crime of our nation?
This is wrong.
It shows how “bad ideas” get into society and are hard to remove–like “you can’t pray in school.”
I’ve read cases of patients dying two feet outside the ER electronic doors and the ER staff calls 911 to bring the patient the two feet inside.
“Fear of Lawsuits” from activities within the Hospital as opposed to “before” the person in need falls within the obligations of the hospital is the main motivator here and maybe even a lawsuit or two that held in this direction==but maybe just the musings of the insurance carrier’s risk management office?
It would be just the opposite if the lawsuit was the other way: liability for two feet we all agree–maybe even 125 feet in the parking garage. How about only a half mile away in a ditch? How is it that common sense approves of 2 feet, denies a half mile, and is conflicted about 125 feet?
Poor fella could have been alive today if this had happened in a more civilized society.
On a positive note, a new pill is available to control unsightly uni-brows.
Do you realize how much more money the hospital can charge for the use of the ambulance? They’ll use that gravy train whenever they can!
Someone want to tell Michelle Bachman that, yes America has the best health care in the world…when they’re willing to give it to you!
These morons better just write a cheque now(and a pretty hefty one!), especially if the families lawyers get those cops onside to testify for a civil case.
Have the lawyers really driven us as a society to lose our humanity? This is just an abomination. No other words can describe the feelings of disgust I have for this hospital and it’s staff. Somethings you just do because they are the right thing to do irregardless of the consequences!!!!!!!!!
There are several reasons this man was not treated in the parking lot. NONE having to do with his insurance status. First, it is doubtful, the hospital mal practice insurance covers treatment outside the building. This leaves the physicians open to litigation as they are nit covered under “good Samaritan” laws due to their training. As a physician I was taught that if I see an accident call 911 and let the EMTs do their job. Many well meaning physicians have lost their homes and savings when unscrupulous lawyers go after them when a person they are trying to help dies. The first thing a lawyer would say in this case is…”With all that advanced cardiac care machinery 125 ft away why were you working in the parking lot”. If the Docs tried to move the man and injured him in the process the tack would be “Why did you move him you should have left that to the trained EMTs”. I can think of several other scenarios for disaster to the hospital. Sad to say but our litigious society makes it difficult to help others. Just look at the comments, most hope he ends up owning the hospital. Sad.
#11 listen to yourself. Better a man dies due to neglect than a cardiac surgeon risk his home. It’s not just the lawyers who are the problem here.
@jcostedpm
Well clearly something has gone wrong in our society when “we” are willing to accept this outcome.
Our lives and the lives of our loved ones are personal to us.
I would blame the lawyers for creating a world where hospital personnel have to watch a man die if he fails to get into the building; but I hate Republicans so much I’m willing to look the other way.
It is delicious irony that half of the comments here are talking about the satisfaction that will come from having lawyers go after this hospital for letting the man die.
#12–R==I’m curious. Can you provide the “moral” imperative that any stranger should help another stranger? For extra credit: why should one stranger put his own health, happiness, career, marriage, wealth, bank account at risk for nothing in return for another stranger?
I’m curious.
#15 RU serious? Where is moral imperative to help another stranger? Your philosophy is bizarre.
#12, are you willing to lose everything you have worked your entire life for, and possible jail time? Its easy to sit, and say you are disgusted by this when its not everything you have worked your entire life for on the line.
You want to blame someone, blame the lawyers, and judges. If they had practiced common sense, instead of sue everyone for everything, then the people in this emergency room would not be scared to go outside of the building and save the guy. You want to solve the first problem, solve the lawyer problem.
Well Dallas then your answer should be easy and informative: go!!
FREEEEEDOM: other people doing/not doing what you don’t like.
Yea. Blame the Doctors. Blame the Hospitals. Blame the Lawyers.
Its vested big corporations. Buy a clue.
Dallas you should spend a little time thinking about things.
These people do not work at Walmart. Where they work people come in several times a day suffering from life-threatening injuries and illnesses and they need to be there to help save all those people.
If they were to ignore what the lawyers tell them even 1% of the time; they would be out of a job in less than 100 days.
It sucks that people have to make such hard decisions.
# 19 @ bobbo
Freedom is granted by societal compact.
Are you free to drive on any side of the road you choose?
Are you free to falsely yell “Fire” in a crowded theater?
Are you free to walk over a dying child and ignore her pain……
Do you want to live in this society? I sure don’t.
How about making the “victim” in this case take some responsibility for his own actions. If he called 911 from his home and was transported to the hospital by professionals he would be alive today. Luckily all he hit was a parking garage. Suppose he passed out and killed someone with his 3500 lb car careening out of control. His estate should pay for the damage to the hospital’s property.
#20–Moshe==now use your intellect to examine the other end of the same continuum.
Dallas: all upset no one will put themselves at risk to help a stranger but you won’t even help a fellow blogger understand your apparently hypocritical value system? Ha, ha. Once again, assuming for arguments sake only because I don’t believe it for a minute, you have to recognize that everyone else is not like you.
We are all the same and different at the same time. Who wishes otherwise while wanting to live with reality? Moshe–you can help too if you want to.
#12 – There’s more to loose for doctors than their homes. They can loose their right to practice medicine. How would you like to loose everything, your profession, and still owe thousands? Are you willing to put everything on the line to help someone who might die anyway? It’s easier to say yes went you’re not in that situation.
I don’t blame the doctors wanting to stay out of the courts.
#12
Why should I go to school for 14 years, incur tremendous debt, and give up most of my time with my family just to give it away to a guy who doesn’t have the common sense to call an ambulance when he’s having a heart attack. It’s really easy to give away someone else’s money isn’t it? You should be a politician. BTW cardiac surgeons don’t man the ER these poor guys are mostly residents doing extra shifts to pay off their student loans and still keep a roof over their heads.
->Dallas
Moral Imperative. Hmm. Interesting concept. Who’s? Yours or mine?
How many vagrants have you invited into your home this winter because they don’t have a place of their own (I hear Dallas was quite cold this year)? No pun intended. Where is your lofty MI when it comes to helping someone just down the road?
Moral imperatives are what drive individuals, not society. And they are very gray. If you could not live with yourself if you let the man lay there, then risking everything you’ve worked for is a no brainer.
However, if losing everything you’ve worked for and putting your own family on the street would be a worse situation then living with the guilt of not helping someone, then that is a no brainer, too.
A society of made up of individuals, not a single, overriding moral imperative.
#18 Bobbo
Let me help you out there:
Common Human Decency
My thanks to Kurt Vonnegut Jr. for that easy and informative phrase.
Give an inch, take a mile. The cold reality is that the hospital is not allowed to work outside their doors. If they responded to this, then the next time they will be blamed because they didn’t go a few feet further.
#26–Reagan==the only problem with that formulation is that not only is it not “common” the truth is just the opposite.
….and so it goes.
#28 bobbo
Speak for yourself.
There are still people in the world, willing to risk everything for their fellow silly Hoomans and fuck all the lawyers and their lawsuits.
Come at me, Bro! I put my trust in jury nullification.
…and so it goes…