Sean: 男性がå¬åœ’で倒れている。

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Posted by Sean:
男性が公園で倒れている。
http://whiteperil.com/posts/1201105181.shtml


   I used to have a friend or two who covered health care here as
   journalists or consultants, so I'd have been able to ask about the
   recent efflorescence of stories about patients' either being turned
   away from hospitals during life-threatening emergencies or being
   turned out of hospitals after their course of treatment was over if
   they had no home or family to go back to. As in, I'm not sure whether
   we're looking at relatively new phenomena, widespread phenomena that
   are finally getting coverage, or a few scattered incidents that eager
   reporters want to interpret as a larger pattern that may not exist.
   I do know that there have been several memorable stories like [1]this
   over the last several months:

     An elderly woman died after 11 hospitals turned her away and
     paramedics struggled to find a medical institution that would
     accept her, it has been learned.
     The 95-year-old woman fell ill at her home in Kiyose, Tokyo, on
     Jan. 8, and was picked up by emergency workers. However, 11
     hospitals in the areas refused to accept her, citing such reasons
     as a lack of beds, and the woman died about 2 1/2 hours after the
     emergency call was made.

   The article ends, "Among the medical institutions that refused to
   accept the woman was a third-level emergency medical facility that was
   equipped to handle patients whose lives were in danger," which raises
   the possibility that other institutions that were contacted may not
   have been able to handle her case (though that would normally make
   them clinics rather than hospitals in English translation). Another
   article in the Mainichi [2]relates that an anorexic teenager was
   refused admission by seven hospitals. She was delirious and unable to
   walk and died the same night.
   One of the incidents covered in the story I linked [3]here may
   [4]produce charges for four of the hospital staff involved:

     Four workers at a hospital here face charges for abandoning a blind
     patient with diabetes at a park in September last year after his
     former wife refused to take him under her care, law enforcers said
     Wednesday.
     Police are poised to send an investigation report to prosecutors,
     accusing four workers at Toyokawa Sogo Hospital in Kita-ku, Sakai,
     of abandoning a person they were responsible for protecting.
     The four transported the patient to his former wife's home in
     Sumiyoshi-ku, Osaka, after doctors deemed that he could be
     discharged from the institution, only to be rejected, investigators
     said. They then abandoned him at a park in Nishinari-ku, Osaka,
     according to local police.
     One of the four then called for an ambulance saying, "A man has
     collapsed at the park. He appears to be visually impaired."

   It's hard to determine from the thin detail given whether the four
   hospital employees implicated actually decided to dump the guy; that
   they called an ambulance (to take him to another hospital!) indicates
   that they were interested in more than just getting rid of him and
   high-tailing it out of there. Perhaps their supervisor told them to
   take the man out of the facility and not to come back with him.

References

   1. http://mdn.mainichi.jp/national/news/20080123p2a00m0na011000c.html
   2. http://mdn.mainichi.jp/national/news/20080119p2a00m0na010000c.html
   3. http://whiteperil.powerblogs.com/posts/1197300593.shtml
   4. http://mdn.mainichi.jp/national/news/20080123p2a00m0na027000c.html