I hope that my focus on the quality of health coverage in DC is not becoming redundant to many of you, but I keep hearing of stories and problems that I feel need to be told. The story in Sunday's Washington Post gave me an even greater perspective on the crisis at Greater Southeast Community Hospital. It is hard to imagine that wings of the hospital are completely closed and that layoffs continue to reduce the staff despite a shortage of health facilities for residents. Is this the face of health care in this city? Why did the DC government allow this to happen? Some of our Councilmembers were asleep at the wheel during this ongoing deterioration. Fortunately, Councilmember Catania is now focusing on this issue and is determined to make things right.
The Post did an excellent job reporting on the state of the hospital, but I want to share with you the story of one of my good friends who was an in-patient at Greater Southeast. While he will remain unnamed, I assure you this is a true story. He currently suffers from a heart condition that causes him to to have occasional mild heart attacks. After one of these, he was admitted to Greater SE. While recovering, he had another episode while walking through the hospital. He passed out and fell to the floor. He was wearing a heart monitor which was working perfectly and detected his cardiac arrest.
While the heart monitor was working, he remained on the floor unconscious without anyone coming to help. Thirty minutes later he was noticed by someone who realized what had happened. In the middle of a hospital, wearing a heart monitor, my friend remained on the floor unconscious for 30 MINUTES and was completely ignored!!! He is lucky to be alive today, most likely because his doctor was able to move him to George Washington University Hospital. As I recount his story, tears are in my eyes. This could have happened to any of us and, sadly,one can only imagine such unfortunate incidents occurring again and again at Greater SE and other under-resourced health facilities in our city and elsewhere.
The wheels have come off our health system and we need to fix it. It is a problem that affects all of us. We have a moral obligation to care for each other. Over the next few weeks I will be presenting ideas to help increase and improve coverage for all DC residents. We can't sit idly and allow this to continue.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
While this story is truely a disgrace and my question is, how long has this sort of thing been going on at Greater SE and why is it just now getting on Catana's to-do list? How can something like this go on in place that should be going through annual inspections and accreditations? And if there is no standard, how do they stay open for business? Why is it that your buddy had to be taken to GW to receive care? It's so unforntunate that we can not care for a race that is human because they are human and leave the dollars signs out of the equation.
Post a Comment