I live in Madison. This is not the first bad thing I have heard about delivering at St. Mary's but certainly it is the worst. I have not given birth there myself. St. Mary's is full of it if they are claiming they are not understaffed and tha tnone of the hospitals in the area are. I have been at both the other area hospitals and from my experience they *are* understaffed.
As for them admitting what they had done, they only admitted it after the feds and state govt came in to investigate and threatened them with the loss of medicare/medicaid patients (big $$$ for hospitals). At first they would only say that the girl had died during an "emergency" c-section. If they had time to explain what was going to happen, and time to give her an epidural first (from my understanding they take about 40 min to take effect from start to finish), that doesn't really sound like an emergency to me. It is my understanding that a true emergency c-section uses general anaesthesia. St. Mary's was trying to cover up and do damage control right from the start.
I was wondering if someone was going to pick up on this story here at MDC!
You are seeing the follow-up story abotu this. The original news story about this came out more than a week prior to this one.
The feds told them a week ahead of time that they were going to be investigated and they still found all kinds of major screw-ups when they got there.
Just a few months ago DH and I were out to eat and overheard some women at another table complaining about the sloppiness and poor care at the maternity ward at St. Mary's. It wasn't clear whether they were nurses themselves or if this was care one of them had received while she was there and I didn't want to be nosy so I didn't ask.
I feel really bad for the nurse. She was probably hurried from overwork and under pressure from her superiors to keep up. The mistakes she made were found throughout this hospital and a symptom of administration problems. My father was a hospital RN so I used to hear all about administration and supervisor lunacy.
This might be cynical, and maybe we'll hear more about what happened later, but I hate to think that maybe this girl was pushed into a c-section because she was on medical assistance and the c-section would get the hospital and doctor more money.
The scary thing is that this hospital is where our insurance requires us to deliver, should we need a hospital. It convinced DH that our next will be a homebirth if at all possible. I am going to write to our ins. co. and request that they switch to Meriter (the other hosp. that does deliveries).
What a sad thing for that girl's baby.
As for them admitting what they had done, they only admitted it after the feds and state govt came in to investigate and threatened them with the loss of medicare/medicaid patients (big $$$ for hospitals). At first they would only say that the girl had died during an "emergency" c-section. If they had time to explain what was going to happen, and time to give her an epidural first (from my understanding they take about 40 min to take effect from start to finish), that doesn't really sound like an emergency to me. It is my understanding that a true emergency c-section uses general anaesthesia. St. Mary's was trying to cover up and do damage control right from the start.
I was wondering if someone was going to pick up on this story here at MDC!
You are seeing the follow-up story abotu this. The original news story about this came out more than a week prior to this one.
The feds told them a week ahead of time that they were going to be investigated and they still found all kinds of major screw-ups when they got there.
Just a few months ago DH and I were out to eat and overheard some women at another table complaining about the sloppiness and poor care at the maternity ward at St. Mary's. It wasn't clear whether they were nurses themselves or if this was care one of them had received while she was there and I didn't want to be nosy so I didn't ask.
I feel really bad for the nurse. She was probably hurried from overwork and under pressure from her superiors to keep up. The mistakes she made were found throughout this hospital and a symptom of administration problems. My father was a hospital RN so I used to hear all about administration and supervisor lunacy.
This might be cynical, and maybe we'll hear more about what happened later, but I hate to think that maybe this girl was pushed into a c-section because she was on medical assistance and the c-section would get the hospital and doctor more money.
The scary thing is that this hospital is where our insurance requires us to deliver, should we need a hospital. It convinced DH that our next will be a homebirth if at all possible. I am going to write to our ins. co. and request that they switch to Meriter (the other hosp. that does deliveries).
What a sad thing for that girl's baby.
:
People should care about nursing conditions - I would venture to say that most units don't follow AWHONN staffing guidelines, and that affects how women are cared for or unable to be cared for by their nurses.
Just my soapbox again...gotta put that thing in the closet. ((hugs Tara)) Thanks.
