A doctor and two nurses were arrested overnight in connection with patient deaths at a New Orleans hospital in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the Louisiana attorney general's office said Tuesday.
"We're not calling this euthanasia. We're not calling this mercy killings. This is second-degree murder," said Kris Wartelle, a spokeswoman for Attorney General Charles C. Foti.
The three were booked but not immediately charged with second-degree murder after their arrests late Monday, officials said.
Foti last fall subpoenaed more than 70 people in an investigation into rumors that medical personnel at Memorial Medical Center had euthanized patients who were in pain as they waited in miserable conditions in the days after the hurricane to be rescued.
Memorial had been cut off by flooding as the Aug. 29 hurricane swamped New Orleans. Power was out in the 317-bed hospital and the temperatures inside rose over 100 degrees as the staff tried to tend to patients who waited four days to be evacuated.
At least 34 patients died at Memorial during that time, 10 of them patients of the hospital's owner Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare Corp. and 24 patients in a facility run by LifeCare Holdings Inc., a separate company.
This investigation is in addition to the investigations into the
deaths at St. Rita's Nursing Home, where a number of patients were killed in the rising floodwaters when the owners did nothing to evacuate the patients from the oncoming storm despite the fact that it was located on a main road and had the means to do so.
No comments:
Post a Comment