Regulators: Parkland hospital broke ER care law
The Dallas Morning News—May 10th, 2010
On a scale of 1 to 10, the emergency room nurse asked, how would you rate your pain?
Ten, the man answered. Severe, the nurse typed.
But 17 hours passed before anyone tried to help him, and soon, it was too late.
The broad outlines of how Mike Herrera spent his final hours at Parkland Memorial Hospital have been known since shortly after his death in 2008. Yet many details were unknown until now, including why he had to wait so long, how his history of heart disease was missed and that his first doctor was an inexperienced medical resident.
Furthermore, federal regulators have determined that Parkland violated the nation’s emergency-treatment law and possibly should be fined, according to records recently obtained by The Dallas Morning News.
“The deficiencies are so serious that they constitute an immediate threat to the health and safety of any individual who comes to your hospital with an emergency medical condition,” the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services told Parkland in a November 2008 letter.
Parkland officials deny that the Dallas County-owned hospital broke the law. But neither they nor federal officials will detail ongoing negotiations over a possible fine, a battle that has played out behind the scenes for well over a year.
The dead man has no advocate in this fight – no attorney would file suit on behalf of Herrera’s family, in part because of the difficulty in proving negligence by a government entity and because of state limits on damage awards.
Read More: The Dallas Morning News
