Would Like to See More Info on This Case
Tuesday, September 27th, 2011I recently read THIS distressing story about a seven year old boy dying of as asthma attack during an ambulance transfer. Of course, whenever you read articles like this in the lay press, you shake your head saying “What the heck were they thinking?!”. Why would you transfer a child with really bad asthma to a far away hospital without intubating him first (if you thought that was even a remote possibility)?
Now, thinking like the ER docs involved, I would imagine that child looked much improved before transfer and presumably they had a relationship with the receiving hospital’s PICU (like we have). Of course you wonder how much of this transfer was because the child had Medicaid. I do know that we have difficulty transferring uninsured or Medicaid patients to many nearby hospitals. Then generally have to go to larger, state-funded centers which may or may not be the best place for them.
I also have to applaud and criticize the author of the article for the way the story opens. It nearly made me cry – but pissed me off that they would resort to that just to get the public to side with the family. Without even considering the actual medical situation (even by just having an unbiased ER MD postulate on possible reasons for the transfer), they succeed in scoring a big victory for the plaintiff.