Deaf Knoxville man sues Parkwest, Covenant Health for refusing to provide an interpreter

[Jilly_in_VA]

(posted earlier in "Tennessee". I think it deserves wider exposure. This is a nationwide proble,. and not only for Deaf Americans."

A federal judge ruled in favor of a Knoxville man to continue his lawsuit against Parkwest Medical Center and Covenant Health on Tuesday, according to court documents obtained by WVLT News.

Scott Tomei is profoundly deaf and communicates by American Sign Language (ASL).

On Oct. 24, 2017, Tomei went to Parkwest Hospital after falling a few days earlier and injuring his right leg and foot.

“Upon his arrival at the hospital, Plaintiff requested a live ASL interpreter,” the document states. “Hospital staff refused Plaintiff’s request.”

Tomei was shown an x-ray of his knee and then sent home with an antibiotic and ibuprofen, but the pain increased. Two days later, he went to the Lenoir City Emergency Room where he was administered multiple medical exams. Doctors there decided to transfer him to Parkwest to see a vascular surgeon for what they thought were blood clots and a Lenoir City nurse called ahead to request an interpreter for him, according to the documents.

https://www.scribd.com/document/554149404/Scott-Allen-Tomei-V-Parkwest-Medical-Center-and-Covenant-Health#from_embed

https://www.wvlt.tv/2022/01/22/deaf-knoxville-man-sues-parkwest-covenant-health-refusing-provide-an-interpreter/
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Blatantly unconstitutional. The hospital will pay big bucks.

[LonePirate]

1. It should be mandated for hospitals and police departments to have interpreters on staff.

I hope Tomei wins his lawsuit.

[Jilly_in_VA]

3. I believe it is mandated

for hospitals, anyway, to have interpreters on call. My former DIL actually works for Covenant Health and is the hearing child of Deaf parents, fluent in ASL. I believe she is also a registered interpreter. They could have called her, FFS. (For the record, I do not like her but she is good at that and they could have called her.)

I did a travel assignment once at a hospital that was so wildly multicultural it was unbelievable. There were nurses from 14 different countries just in the unit I worked in, and probably another 5 or 6 other countries in the adjacent unit. We had a running joke, "Don't worry if no one on this shift speaks your language, someone on the next shift surely will." If we got stuck we'd holler out the door to the adjacent unit. We rarely had to call for an interpreter. The only time we really got stumped was with a patient from some distant province in Afghanistan who spoke a dialect, not Pushtun. That time we finally had to call a niece of hers who, thankfully, was also a nurse, to get things straight.

[ProfessorGAC]

2. They Refused???

If they couldn't get one (which would be terrible planning) that's one thing.
But, if they flat out said no, that's egregious.
We'll see what a civil jury says.

[Jilly_in_VA]

4. Note that IT also dropped the ball.

Big time. "The machine wasn’t functioning because the hospital’s network firewalls interrupted the video feed along with other issues." This was the video interpreter connection. Geez.

[ProfessorGAC]

10. Who Runs That Place?

Moe, Larry & Curly?
There isn't a team of network admins there 24/7? If they did have them there, wouldn't a workaround be a matter of a few minutes?
Or, the clinical staff couldn't write down "Give us a few minutes to fix a tech problem. Then we'll have a signing interpreter."?
They just sent him home.
Pretty shabby.

[SWBTATTReg]

5. Good. I hope that he sues their a&& off. This is a legitimate handicap, and those that are hearing

impaired like me suffer from the fact that we don't look 'handicapped'. You look at us and we look 'normal'. I remember when I was in the hospital one time, and the nurses would come into the room at night, not turn the lights on, and mumble something to me, of course, me being hard of hearing and instead of ASL I read lips, so reading lips in the dark is a challenge for anybody. I gripped at them and to their credit, the hospital staff put a big sign on the door to the room, saying that person inside was extremely hearing challenged, and thus, turn the lights on so they can read your lips.

I give them credit here, they actually listened to us and did something about it.

FYI, my hearing loss is 95% and 90% (left and right ears). Hearing aids don't catch everything (assuming that I can find them in the dark and put them in).

[tblue37]

6. You might be interested in my articles on my deaf/hard of hearing website:

I'm Listening as Hard as I Can!

http://deafnotdumb.homestead.com/

[SWBTATTReg]

7. Thanks!

[Scottie Mom]

8. Thanks!

I am profoundly hearing impaired.

[peggysue2]

9. Wow!

My husband (even my MIL after she moved in with us) have been patients at Parkwest. It's a really nice facility with all the technology you would expect in a large hospital system. We never had any problems there. In fact, I give kudos to the palliative-care staff who administered comfort measures to my mother-in-law in her last hours.

This case sounds like a huge administrative failure. Incomprehensible that the responsible staff would refuse this man's request for an interpreter and/or that they entirely missed possible blood clots.

Another reason to be glad we're out of TN.