Groups respond to NPR report hospital euthanized Katrina patients

[kpete]

Groups respond to NPR report hospital euthanized Katrina patients
RAW STORY
Published: February 22, 2006

Anti-euthanasia groups are responding to National Public Radio reports claiming that New Orleans hospitals gave patients lethal doses of pain killers during Hurricane Katrina.

Rumors of patient euthanasia began to spread soon after Katrina struck, but NPR reporter Carrie Kahn claimed in a February 16 All Things Considered report that the news agency had reviewed unreleased court documents relating to the attorney general's probe of Memorial Medical Center. Memorial was surrounded by water and without power as temperatures shot over 100 degrees in the chaos that followed Katrina.

According to NPR:

The documents reveal chilling details about events at Memorial hospital in the chaotic days following the storm, including hospital administrators who saw a doctor filling syringes with painkillers and heard plans to give patients lethal doses. The witnesses also heard staff discussing the agonizing decision to end patients' lives.

..............


According to court documents reviewed by NPR, a key discussion took place on Thursday, Sept. 1, during an incident-command meeting held on the hospital's emergency ramp. A nurse told LifeCare's pharmacy director that the hospital's seventh-floor LifeCare patients were critical and not expected to be evacuated with the rest of the hospital. According to statements given to an investigator in the attorney general's office, LifeCare's pharmacy director, the director of physical medicine and an assistant administrator say they were told that the evacuation plan for the seventh floor was to "not leave any living patients behind," and that "a lethal dose would be administered," according to their statements in court documents.

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Groups_respond_to_NPR_report_hospital_0222.html

[knitter4democracy]

1. My hubby and I talked about that at the time.

He wondered what they were going to do with unit patients who wouldn't survive an evac (and who usually don't survive anyway) and said he was glad he wasn't the doctor in charge. He said it was bad either way for everyone involved.

That's what our government did--they left everyone there to die and left the medical staffs to deal with it however best they could. Bastards.

[HeeBGBz]

2. I was hearing of this not long after the storm

I wish I could remember when I first heard a mention of it. We were on limited media after the storm. WLOX was the only TV media and there was that simulcast on radio plus one New Orleans station on the radio. It could have been either one of those.