Patient Dies Awaiting Emergency Care

By Walter F. Roche Jr.

A patient in a hospital emergency room died awaiting treatment after hospital personnel failed to even connect him to a heart monitor.
The May 30 incident at the 30-bed Conemaugh Miners Medical Center in Hastings was detailed in a June 29 report on a complaint investigation.
The hospital "failed to implement emergency treatment and procedures in a timely manner," the 10-page report states.
The unnamed patient arrived at the medical center at 8:15 a.m., complaining of two days of vomiting, diarrhea and stomach cramps.
While he was awaiting an IV, the patient asked to go to the bathroom but became unresponsive when a staffer attempted to put him in a wheelchair.
The report says the patient was then brought back to his room in the emergency department. Thirty minutes of CPR was unsuccessful.
The report states CPR was abandoned "due to medical futility."
According to the report the patient was not placed on a monitor until the patient coded at 9:30 a.m. The monitor had been ordered at 8:40 a.m.
"There was no monitor strip to view at all and the patient did not have an EKG," the report states.
Staffers at the Conemaugh Health System facility told state surveyors there was no blood pressure recorded because they were unable to get one, but that failure was not documented in the patient record.
State surveyors were told the staff was "fairly new and was nervous about getting respiratory supplies gathered for intubation."
During the CPR effort the wife of the patient took over when the nurse became tired, the report states.
"There was a bit of a delay in getting it all together," the report states.
In its plan of correction, medical center officials said staff would be re-educated on the need for obtaining vital signs and establishing the patient's severity index number at the time of admission.
Hospital officials did not respond to requests for comment,
The hospital "failed to provide good quality care," the report concludes.
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