Pleas for Help Ignored: Woman Dies on Floor of E.R.

According to the L.A. Times, Edith Isabel Rodriguez lay dying on the Emergency Room floor of Martin Luther King Jr. Harbor Hospital, while hospital staff did nothing to assist her.

As the woman's boyfriend pleaded with those around her for help the mother of three and grandmother of four, she bled all over the E.R. floor from what a Country Coroner found was a perforated bowel.

Nearby a janitor for the hospital mopped up the woman's blood. After Mrs. Rodriguez had made three visits to King-Harbor Hospital for her severe pain, she lay down on a bench outside the hospital. Finding her condition deteriorating, her boyfriend escorted her back inside where Rodriguez collapsed. Through an interpretor, the woman's boyfriend called 911 and pleaded with no avail to police dispatchers. He was told that there was nothing they could do to assist him as he was already at a hospital.

During the days prior to the death of Edith Rodriguez, the couple had sought relief for her pain at the hospital receiving only prescription pain medications and being told that she could go home.

During the evening of her death, her pain increased to the point that she returned once again to the E.R. The woman who collapsed on the floor in agony began spitting up blood. In the news article from the L.A. Times, Jose Prada pleaded with dispatchers on a pay phone located outside the emergency room saying, "My wife is dying and the nurses don't want to help her out." Prada's tone grew more and more desperate as he watched her deteriorate. The L. A. Sheriff's Dept. dispatcher struggled to make sense of the call and urged him to instead contact the doctors and nurses at the hospital, as they were already there.

Eight minutes later an unidentified woman, apparently another patient, placed another call to 911. She pleaded with dispatchers for 2 and 1/2 minutes while being repeatedly interrupted and admonished for making unnecessary calls to 911.

While trying to convince dispatchers of Rodriguez's predicament, she was told that 911 was only for life and death situations and she should hang up and call the regular phone number if she wasn't happy with the service she was getting at the hospital. Frustrated the woman finally told the dispatcher, "May God strike you too for acting the way you just acted." The dispatcher replied with, "No negative Ma'am, You are the one." The call then disconnected.

The L.A. County Coroner ruled that Rodriguez might have been saved if her condition had been detected sooner.

The 911 recordings were released by Sheriff's Department in response to the California Public Records Act, after requested by the L.A. Times. Rodriguez lay unattended on the floor of the hospital emergency room for 45 minutes without attention before succumbing to her illness. She was pronounced dead at 2:17 a.m. Sheriff's Captain Steven M. Reller, who is in charge of Century Station, which handled the call, said that the dismissive tone of the dispatcher was "inappropriate." The worker later received written "counseling" for his response.

In another prior situation at the same hospital, a man with a brain tumor had languished for four days in the same emergency room before being removed by family members and taken to another hospital for emergency surgery. The hospital medical director was replaced after the incident.

Edith Isabel Rodriguez was one of 13 siblings. Rodriguez's funeral service was held after family members raised money by making tamales and having car washes to pay the $7,500 bill. A wreath of red roses and white carnations covered the woman's pastel pink casket while 30 or so family members and close friends sobbed nearby.

LA Times, Tragic Catch-911 for dying woman, http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-calls13jun13,0,3172164.story?page=4&coll=la-headlines-california