[myspacecoo]

Associated Press (AP)

Mental Patient Left For Dead On Hospital Waiting Room

NEW YORK (July 1) - City hospital officials agreed in court Tuesday to implement reforms at a psychiatric ward where surveillance footage showed a woman falling from her chair, writhing on the floor and dying as workers failed to help for more than an hour.

Esmin Green, 49, had been waiting in the emergency room for nearly 24 hours when she toppled from her seat at 5:32 a.m. on June 19, falling face down on the floor.

Surveilance Video Here

She was dead by 6:35, when someone on the medical staff, flagged down by a person in the waiting room, finally approached, nudged Green with her foot, and gently prodded her shoulder, as if to wake her. The staffer then left and returned with someone wearing a white lab coat who examined her and summoned help.

Until the staffer's appearance, Green's collapse barely caused a ripple. Other patients waiting a few feet away didn't react. Security guards and a member of the hospital's staff appeared to notice her prone body at least three times, but made no visible attempt to see if she needed help.

One guard didn't even leave his chair, rolling it around a corner to stare at the body, then rolling away a few moments later.

Green, who had been involuntarily committed the previous morning, and had waited overnight for a bed, stopped moving about half an hour after she collapsed.

The New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation, which runs the hospital, said six people have been fired as a result, including security personnel and members of the medical staff.

The psychiatric unit at Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn had already been a subject of complaints by advocates for the mentally ill.

A state agency, the New York State Mental Hygiene Legal Service, and the New York Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit a year ago, calling the psychiatric center "a chamber of filth, decay, indifference and danger."

Both sides in the dispute went before a federal judge Tuesday to jointly file papers in which the hospital system agreed to a series of reforms. Under the agreement, patients in the waiting room will now be checked every 15 minutes.

Over the next four months, the hospital will attempt to shorten the median waiting time to around 10 hours. A judge is scheduled to sign off on the agreement Wednesday.

The tape of Green's wait has also been turned over to prosecutors.

Green's medical records raised the possibility that someone might have tried to cover up the circumstances of the death.

One notation said that at 6 a.m., she was "awake, up and about" and had just used the restroom. Another said that at 6:20 a.m., she was sitting quietly in the waiting room, and had a normal blood pressure. During both of those times, Green was either in her death throes or already dead.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg said he was disgusted by the tape, and that the actions of the hospital staff were unacceptable.

"I think what they said is, 'Oh well, people sleep on the floor all the time, and I didn't pay any attention,'" he said. "They shouldn't be sleeping on the floor ... and you should pay attention."

HHC's president, Alan Aviles, said in a statement that he was shocked and distressed by the situation and promised a thorough investigation.

"We are all shocked and distressed by this situation," HHC's president, Alan Aviles, said in a statement. "We express our deep regrets to the patient's family and will ensure a thorough investigation to answer any questions that remain."

Details of the death were disclosed by the hospital on June 20, but the case largely remained unnoticed until the video became public.

According to the lawsuit, patients at the hospital "are subjected to overcrowded and squalid conditions often accompanied by physical abuse and unnecessary and punitive injections of mind-altering drugs."

"From the moment a person steps through the doors," it added, "she is stripped of her freedom and dignity and literally forced to fight for the essentials of life."

The suit was especially critical of the hospital's emergency ward, saying it is so poorly staffed that patients are often marooned there for days while they wait to be evaluated.

Sometimes the unit runs out of chairs, according to the lawsuit, forcing people to wait on foam mats or on the waiting room floor. The suit also claims that bathrooms are filthy and filled with flies, and that patients who complain too loudly are sometimes handcuffed, beaten or injected with psychotropic drugs.

The office of the city's medical examiner said it was still trying to determine why Green died. She had been brought to the hospital suffering from agitation and psychosis, city officials said.

Green was born in Jamaica, and the city has agreed to fly her body home for burial.


Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. All active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.

[BrianGoldsmith]

I saw this on the Post yesterday. It's horrible watching the surveillance video and thinking how someone can just sit there and watch someone collapse like that.

[johnbeller]

Something similar happened last year in a Los Angeles hospital and they shut down the entire facility for good.

[voodoosdv]

I couldn't believe it when I saw the video. The guards paid virtually no attention to her.

[gabbaman]

Something similar happened last year in a Los Angeles hospital and they shut down the entire facility for good.

I wonder what "legal actions" will be taken with this case. Part of me thinks the same thing should happen to this place.

[ViagraPriceBuying]

They've been talking about shutting that place down for a while now.

[911_993_911]

^ Is that enough? What about the criminals who work there? Will they turn thr next place into a hellhole?

[Reafnartefs]

how appalling. what an absolute disgrace. the staff should be prosecuted for criminal indifference.

[Acrogeokickic]

Why is anyone shocked? Sounds like her experience (the long wait, the lack of care - not the dying) has been par for the course for a long long time at facilities like this. She's probably just the first one to be caught on video - who knows how many other people suffered the same fate as her, without the media coverage?

[Abraham]

It showed a janitor mopping around a man that was dying in the ER waiting area.

[JTS_tv]

That's nearly worse than this incident. What kind of people are (mental) hospitals hiring these days?!

[pirinosa]

It was a general hospital.

[Oxzzlvpg]

Oh, alright.

--

Mayor's fury over hospital shocker

BY JOHN MARZULLI, ERIN EINHORN and STEPHANIE GASKELL
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS

Tuesday, July 1st 2008, 11:13 PM

An angry Mayor Bloomberg said he was "disgusted" by a video that showed employees at Kings County Hospital ignoring a Brooklyn woman as she lay dying on a waiting room floor.

"Horrified is much too nice a word," the mayor said Tuesday after watching the 107-minute tape. "Disgusted, I think, is a better word."

Esmin Green, 49, died on June 19 after going to the psych ward at the Brooklyn hospital. As she waited for help for nearly 24 hours, she fell from her chair at 5:32 a.m. and began convulsing.

Lying facedown, she was ignored for more than an hour by hospital security guards and staff. By then, it was too late.

"I can't explain what happened there," Bloomberg said.

Four employees and two security guards were fired, and city investigators are considering filing criminal charges.

The city's medical examiner has not determined the cause of death.
At Green's church, friends said they were shocked by her death and described her as "a healthy, strong woman."

"It's the last thing we expected," said Pastor Dief Ebanks of the Jesus Is Love Church in Canarsie. "It's terrible that people could be so unfriendly and hard and tough."

Ebanks said Green "was a little off at times," but "loving." He said she was a housekeeper, a day-care worker and the sole financial support of her six children back in Jamaica.

Green's sister is expected to fly here from Jamaica to take her body home. City officials said they would pay all funeral costs.

Bloomberg said he still has confidence in Health and Hospitals Corp. President Alan Aviles, who runs the city's hospitals.

"I think he did exactly what he should have done," Bloomberg said.

Copyright 2008 New York Daily News

[ephennaCypota]

The mayor ought to spare us the fury. Psychiatric wards at the best hospitals in this city treat patients with very little dignity. This is appalling, but it's no surprise.

It's also what happens when treatment and services are relegated to low-wage minimally skilled staff.

Not one person in that video rushed into that room.

[Aminkaoo]

As bad as it seems, it is not fair to lay the blame on just the people standing there.

If noone will help you when you get the person up, and if you are at risk of being sued or taken to court because you are not the doctor or nurse on call for that shift, there is not only no encouragement for doing this, but outright discouragement of stepping out of your role.

I would not be surprised if people have gotten chastised in the past for being, what some there would consider, a PITA for paying "too much" attension to them.


I do not agree with this, but I have seen it in so many professions where trynig to do the right thing eind up leaving you with a pile of grief from your co-workers and POSSIBLY trouble from your patients/clients.

Sad but true. In many environments, not committing to something is safer than trying and failing.

[zlopikanikanzax]

Kings County Hospital's psych chief, security boss ousted over death

BY BARRY PADDOCK, XANA O'NEILL and STEPHANIE GASKELL
DAILY NEWS WRITERS

Wednesday, July 2nd 2008, 8:28 PM

The head of psychiatry at Kings County Hospital was among the six people fired after a Brooklyn woman was left to die on a waiting room floor last month.

Pierre Arty got the ax, along with Kenneth Jones, the hospital's director of security, for his role in the shocking June 19 death of Esmin Green.

"I'd rather not talk right now," Arty told the Daily News outside his Brooklyn apartment Wednesday. "I think it's in my best interest not to say anything."


Dr. Pierre Arty


Four other employees also were fired, including two security guards who can be seen on a disturbing hospital video looking at Green, 49, as she lay on the floor dying, then ignoring her.

Green's daughter said she was too upset to watch the video.

"I have not seen it and to tell you the truth, I don't want to see it," a distraught Trecia Harrison told The News by phone from the island of Jamaica. "My heart is broken. My 2-year-old daughter won't know her grandmother."

She said no one from the city or the hospital had called her.

I need to know: Why did she have to sit there alone?" Harrison said, adding that her mother moved to New York eight years ago.

"My mother is one of the stronger women in the world," she said. "She was just lonely. She was missing her kids."

A friend said Green knocked on her door early on June 18 asking for help after losing her job and her apartment.

"From the time I saw her, I knew something was wrong," said Marilyn Ann Johnson, pastor of Jesus Is Lord church in Canarsie, Brooklyn, where Green was a Sunday school teacher.

Johnson called 911 and had Green admitted to Kings County Hospital.
"She stepped into the ambulance. Twenty-four hours after, she was a dead woman," Johnson said.

Copyright 2008 New York Daily News

[cookiemonster]

^^ The face of a sore sorry loser

[realnilkless]

Tears, outrage at funeral for ignored hospital victim

BY WIL CRUZ
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Sunday, July 6th 2008, 11:44 PM

Esmin Green may have died alone and ignored on the floor of a busy Brooklyn hospital waiting room.

But her funeral Sunday at Jesus Is Lord Church in Canarsie, where she taught Sunday school, was packed to the rafters.


Esmin Green

"She looks great. She looks beautiful," said church elder Compton Cuffy as he looked at Green, laid out in a white dress and white lace gloves in a blue casket.

A sign by Green's body said she was now "in God's care."

It was a poignant reminder of the care she did not receive during her last day on Earth.

Green, 49, a mother of six who moved to New York from Jamaica eight years ago, died June 19 after waiting more than 24 hours for help in the psychiatric ward of Kings County Hospital.

Security video showed her finally falling off her waiting room chair in convulsions.

Then, for an hour, she lay facedown on the floor, her legs splayed, as patients and staff ignored her.

Six employees were fired after the tragedy came to light.


Trecia Harrison mourns her mother, Esmin Green.

"I can't even describe what we're going through," said Green's daughter Trecia Harrison, 31. "My heart is broken because I knew that eventually I would lose her, but not in the way she went."

Copyright 2008 New York Daily News

[L8fGLM4d]

Sculptor depicts Kings County Hospital patient's death in installation

BY JOHN MARZULLI
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Friday, July 25th 2008, 7:50 PM


Artist Dawn Petrlik stands in front of her piece 'The Lonely Death of Esmin Green,'
which recreates mental patient Green's body near hospital waiting chairs and a TV
with live video.

On the eve of the opening of her art project depicting the horrifying death by neglect of a mental patient at Kings County Hospital, sculptor Dawn Petrlik found herself in the waiting room of the emergency room of another Brooklyn hospital last week.

While waiting for an X-ray of her injured foot, Petrlik recalled her initial shock of watching the surveillance video that showed Esmin Green dying on the floor in the psychiatric emergency room. This inspired her to create a work of art in which viewers question their own feelings of ambivalence and disconnect.

The video, showing security guards caught in the act of ignoring Green sprawled on the floor, became the smoking gun that led to sweeping changes at the psychiatric unit known as Building G.

"I was shocked, not only by what happened, but we are all watching her die," Petrlik said. "I'm very glad that there's been attention brought to her case, but the video element of it bothered me."

Petrlik, who has experience designing sets for Broadway and TV shows, set out to recreate the death scene - eight waiting room chairs, a ghostly 200-pound clay model of Green and a video camera feeding a live image on a TV screen of visitors viewing the disturbing scene.

Her recreation is on display at the Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition in Red Hook.

"The viewer becomes the viewed and it's creepy - and if it gives someone the creeps, my message has gotten through," she said.

Petrlik, of Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn, said she has struggled to understand the mind-set of the guards who did nothing to help Green.

"Hopefully we can understand that this was a death that was really preventable had someone gotten involved and not treated it as a spectator sport," she said.

The installation, located at the coalition's warehouse headquarters, 499 Van Brunt St., Red Hook, will run for six weeks. For information, call (718) 596-2506.

Copyright 2008 NYDailyNews.com

[CoenceLomneedtrue]

I noticed that none of her fellow waiting room patients did anything either.