Care for Critically Ill Patient Delayed

By Walter F. Roche Jr.

A critically ill 79-year-old patient was kept waiting nearly five hours last Christmas before being transferred to a higher level of care and placed on a monitor as her doctor had ordered.
The case involving the 249-bed Lehigh Valley Hospital - Pocono was detailed in a report recently made public by the state Health Department.
The patient arrived at the East Stroudsburg hospital suffering from a gastrointestinal bleed. Shortly before noon, the report states, the patient's condition worsened and the attending physician ordered that she be transferred to the telemetry unit and placed on a monitor.
That order came at 11:46 a.m., but it wasn't until 5:03 p.m. that the patient was transferred.
The patient was not monitored from 11:46 a.m. to 5:03 p.m.,the report notes.
When state surveyors questioned hospital employees about the delay, they were told there were no telemetry units on the medical/surgical floor and staffers had not been trained to read telemetry monitors.
The patient's transfer was delayed because there were no available beds in the telemetry unit, the state surveyors were told.
The hospital filed a plan of correction which calls for a nurse to monitor patients awaiting transfer to the telemetry unit. If that was not possible the patient would be transferred to another facility.
Hospital officials did not respond to a series of questions about the report including the ultimate outcome for the 79-year-old patient.
Contact: wfrochejr999@gmail.com