It is horrible that in today’s day and age, in the US, a mother dies after childbirth from necrotizing fasciitis. It’s even more horrible that hospitals let people suffer unnecessarily. All of the patient safety literature advocates apology, disclosure and compensation after a preventable event yet instead of doing this we leave families to deal with the death of their loved one and also the trauma of carrying on…worrying about daily life, providing for children, looking for answers..
While CMS makes never events that they wont pay for, this doesnt impact patients directly. Before never events there should have been the demanding of a fulldisclosure and fair compensation policy.
Not only is this the right thing to do, it directly forces hosptials to “pay up” so to speak which would make it likely that hospitals would truly invest in safety if for no other reason than the bottom line of expenditures..EMMC is a good hospital by many standards..but it cannot allow people to suffer any more than they have too when a mistake or preventable event occurs. Don’t listen to your lawyers, listen to your hearts and consciences…Pay up, involve the families in the investigation, be transparent and never let this happen again…and take care of the staff invovled as they are the second victims of this tragedy..dont let efficiency and productivity cause people to drift into unsafe conditions.
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