Hospital calls cops

Hospital deaths bring police probe

The operators of a hospital in which two patients died after they were possibly wrongly given insulin are now facing a police investigation.

A team of doctors and nurses will be the focus of the inquiry, according to a newspaper story. The report says police were brought in after an internal hospital investigation failed to establish what happened.

A spokesman for the operators of the hospital is quoted as saying that the outside investigation was necessary to retain public trust.

“In order to safeguard patient safety, the hospital will carefully investigate any drug error. We take the safe administration of medicines very seriously,” he said.

Could this be a hospital in the U.S. doing the right thing and being open and honest when something goes wrong?

No, this hospital is Wythenshawe Hospital in Manchester, England.

The story appeared in the Manchester Evening News on Nov. 11 – two years to the day after Lisa was found in her bed at Samaritan Hospital with a blood sugar level of just 2.

The hospital’s own written instructions for treating low blood sugar says any reading below 60 requires immediate action.
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Just how Samaritan Hospital will say anything rather then admit what is clearly documented in its own records can be seen in its response to a request for a copy of those written instructions for dealing a case of low blood sugar.

Lawyers representing Samaritan have forwarded a copy of its "hypoglycemia protocol." But with it came the following statement:

“This demand is irrelevant with respect to the decedent’s medical care at Samaritan Hospital in November, 2003.”

That must be why the nurses responsible for Lisa that night completely ignored the protocol after an insulin reaction two hours earlier, instead leaving her to almost die in her bed, just 30 feet from the fourth-floor nurses’ station.