American College of Emergency Physicians recently gave the United States D+ for emergency medical services. This may be well explained by the latest emergency room case where a 30-year-old man died after waiting for 8-long hours to get treated in a New York City hospital.
Jon Verrier went to the emergency room at St Barnabas Hospital with a skin rash problem at 10 pm, January 19. After 8 hours he was found dead. He was noticed by the medical staff "stiff, blue, and cold" in a waiting room chair. According to an ER worker, Verrier might have been dead for several hours, reported ABC 7.
The hospital authorities said that Verrier's name was announced three times between 10 pm and 2 pm but he did not respond. One ER staffer told The Stir that the hospital does not have any policy to keep a check on the patients after repeatedly calling out their names. "There's no policy in place to check the waiting room to see if people waiting to be seen are still there or still alive."
According to Fox News, security footage showed that Verrier was alive as late as 3:45 am. At 6:40am a security guard found him dead. The hospital spokesman said they met all the guidelines in the case.
They further stated that Verrier was solely responsible for his death as he had visited the hospital previously for drug addiction
However, another employee said the hospital version of the story "feels like a cover-up." "He died because (of) not enough staff," he said on condition of anonymity, reported Fox News.
Verrier's family reacted to his death saying that patients are treated just like numbers." "You're just a number no matter where you go," Verrier's brother Charles told ABC 7. "That's how they treated him, like a number." According to the New York Post, Saint Barnabas' emergency room has an average turnaround time of 306 minutes, more than twice the national average.
