Blood boiler
Here’s one that has nothing to do with the military, but is sure an ‘interesting’ story.
Jessie Marie Peterson had been suffering from Type 1 diabetes when she was admitted to Mercy San Juan Medical Center on April 6 last year, according to allegations made in a Sacramento County Superior Court lawsuit filed earlier this month by the patient’s family.
Days after she was admitted, Peterson’s mother Ginger Congi called Mercy San Juan to check on her daughter was told the patient had been discharged, according to the complaint.
The family filed a missing person’s report with the county sheriff’s department, posted notices around town and even interviewed local homeless people in hopes someone had seen Peterson.
Nothing major, right? People go missing all the time. But…
“The family searched and searched for Jessie. It was not until April 12, 2024, that the Sacramento County Detective’s Office notified Jessie’s family that she was found deceased at Mercy San Juan hospital,” according to the lawsuit filed by the plaintiffs’ attorney Marc Greenberg.
Now it gets ugly…she died two DAYS after being admitted. She was already dead when her mother called.
“At this point, Jessie’s body was so decomposed that an open casket funeral was not feasible, and Jessie’s fingerprints were not even obtainable for any keepsake.”
The decomposition also made it impossible for an autopsy to determine “whether medical malpractice played any role” in Peterson’s death, the lawsuit said.
The family eventually found out Peterson died on April 8 last year, but it took until April 4 of this year for a death certificate to be signed by Dr. Nadeem Mukhtar.
For almost all this time, Peterson’s body had been kept shelf No. Red 22A in an off-site cold storage unit, according to hospital records obtained by the family. NBC News
A freakin’ YEAR? The family is suing for $25,000,000, which seems extremely restrained to me. And even if malpractice in the actual death can’t be determined, sure looks like there was a bunch of malpractice afterwards.
I’m surprised someone in that family hasn’t started collecting trophies, ifyaknowwhadImean…
Category: Crime
25M would be my lawyers cut of the settlement.
Another reason to not trust hospitals. No excuse at all for this.
I think it is more of a “Don’t trust big corporate hospital conglomerates.” I work for a small rural hospital. The people making the decisions live in the community, not in a corporate HQ 200 miles away. They are motivated by what’s best for their families that get care here, and not how much money they can squeeze from patients. Big difference.
I agree, ANCRN. Health care is kinda like Real Estate (and pretty much anything)…Location.Location.Location. In the Little Big Towns up the road from me are three (3) hospital complexes. Two (2) of which used to be semi locally owned/operated. The largest has been Corporate MD for a number of years and had a piss poor rep for care. The other two have become Corporate MD in the last few years and have gone to sh*t. I have friends that have/worked at all, and they don’t even want their family members treated there. Those friends did take special care to look after a Lady Friend that had overnight out patient/overnight recovery stay and she weathered the storm with that extry lookout. The same Lady friend was on a trip to Nebraska to visit family and needed to see the little smal hospital in a town there with less than 1K people population. She had excellent care and those folks even took care of an ongoing problem that the local medicos hadn’t been able to do for years. They even made some adjustments to her ongoing meds that made a big difference in her “quality of life” issues. Bad news was the Medicare/Part C/D supplement didn’t want to pay because she didn’t have a “referral” from her local, primary care MD. Kinda hard to get a referral from 1K miles away…on a Sunday Morning. Good news was the fee was very reasonable. Was less than what the local docs charge for a routine visit.
I have a brother-in-law who also worked in a small rural hospital. His was owned, however, by a large corporation. He has some interesting stories.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067217/
Good movie
I wonder who all had access to that off-site morgue locker.
The story I read said, that she had been told she was being released, and she had called her mother to pick her up. She apparently died two hours later… nothing further mentioned as to how, but the story said a doctor signed her death certificate at the time.
In my experience, when healthcare goes corporate the bottom line becomes the focus, not the patients.
I know a lot of folks involved in different levels of healthcare and they are dedicated to helping their patients.
Some of them, sadly, get zip-tied by some corporate suits. They usually find a way to get it done anyway.
IIRC, the body decomposed because it was parked in a little used corridor or stairwell for several weeks before it was discovered by hospital staff.
By that they meant ” find out where that smell is coming from”.
The smell at two days should have been …. potent. Day old hamburger in a McDonalds dumpster, above 80F, is a 100m smell for me.
Granted, my sense of smell is comic-book stuff.