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But first at eleven o'clock: Death in a Hospital Waiting Room.
How could it happen, and are patients in need of immediate care being ignored?
And good evening to you. I'm Liz Cho.
And I'm Bill Ritter. Disturbing video emerging tonight,
and it is raising some serious questions about the care given at one particular New York City hospital.
Eyewitness News reporter Lucy Yang is here now with much more on this story. Lucy.
Well, Liz and Bill, she was a forty-nine year old woman in desperate need of medical care,
and she was exactly where she should have been: in a psychiatric unit.
Except, surveillance tape, which we are about to show you,
leaves critics accusing Kings County Hospital of neglecting this patient to the point of her death.
The first thing you see is the woman falling off her chair and landing face down
on the floor of the psychiatric emergency ward inside Kings County Hospital.
What happens next – or rather what doesn't happen – is now the center of a massive lawsuit against the hospital.
Those familiar with the case say the forty-nine year old woman dies right in front of the
surveillance camera as the medical staff walk by her and ignore her.
Apparently, not one angel of mercy concerned that she is convulsing on the floor.
Almost an hour later, when workers finally do respond, it is too late for the Brooklyn woman.
The scene played out on June nineteenth of this year.
The patient had been admitted to the psychiatric ward for agitation and psychosis just the day before,
and was here waiting for a bed when she died all alone on the floor.
It has been eleven days now and the medical examiner has yet to determine a cause of death,
but whatever claimed her life, even city officials admit no one tended to her for an hour.
More than a year ago, advocates lodged a lawsuit against this public hospital claiming the
psychiatric ward is like a page out of a horror movie where patients who can't fight for
themselves are neglected, abused, and kept in unsanitary conditions.
Then came the death this month, underscoring those very allegations in the most graphic of ways.
It cost one woman her life, but there are indications the hospital is ready to make some changes.
The city's Health and Hospital Corporation tonight promising these reforms:
additional staffing, expanded crisis prevention training,
and that patients in the psychiatric emergency unit are checked every fifteen minutes.
Now, a news conference is scheduled for this case tomorrow.
The lawsuit claims workers initially tried to cover up claiming
the patient did receive care except you don't see it on the tape.
So far, at least half-a-dozen workers at Kings County Hospital have been fired or suspended.
You can view this disturbing video again at our web site.
www.7online.com
Bill. Liz.
That's just horrifying, and at least there's video here to substantiate it.
Lucy, thank you.