Criminal Neglect

This video is hard to watch. A woman is shown keeling over and passing out in a waiting area at the psych ward of Kings County Hospital and no one bothers to check on her.

A shocking video shows a woman dying on the floor in the psych ward at Kings County Hospital, while people around her, including a security guard, did nothing to help.

After an hour, another mental patient finally got the attention of the indifferent hospital workers, according to the tape, obtained by the Daily News.

Worse still, the surveillance tape suggests hospital staff may have falsified medical charts to cover the utter lack of treatment provided Esmin Green before she died.

"Thank God for the videotape because no one would have believed this could have happened," said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union.

"There's a clear possibility of criminal wrongdoing with regard to recordkeeping, and that has to be investigated."

The city Department of Investigation is part of a sweeping probe that has brought some changes to the ward known as G Building.

More than 45 minutes later personnel come and attempt to revive her, but she's already dead. And Kings County hospital officials are under the gun to explain how and why this happened.

Several people have already been fired as a result of their actions. That's not nearly sufficient here. The City's Department of Investigations is looking into the matter, but I expect the District Attorney to bring charges against hospital officials, possibly criminally negligent homicide.

UPDATE:


UPDATE:
One of my friends happened to have worked at Kings County some time ago and she is quite familiar with the operations there. The following is excerpts from her email to me on the subject - I'm adjusting her comments to protect her identity and references to her:

She is amazed that something like this hadn't happened sooner. Overcrowding was and she believes that it is still a huge problem at Kings County, especially in the G-Building. A lot of times, she would come in to the G-ER (especially on an Monday morning) and patients would be sleeping in chairs because there were no beds available.

If one of patients required inpatient hospitalization and wound up in the G-Building, we'd get them transferred across the street to the unit at SUNY Downstate.

It's very sad and frightening that a lot of health professionals assume that because you have a psychiatric disorder, the physical symptoms you have are just in your head. One of the patients had been in and out of the medical ER at Kings County for persistent anemia. They'd just given the patient iron pills and sent them on their way. The resident who I was working with on this particular case was finally able to get a more thorough workup done. It turned out that the patient had lymphoma and was HIV positive.

The patient died shortly thereafter.

This is a city owned hospital, and the City will bear the brunt of the legal action. It's unconscionable that a medical facility would treat its patients like this.

Problems at this hospital have been systemic and ongoing for quite some time. Maybe it will take this horrible video to finally resolve those longstanding issues.