Nationalized Health Care Can Kill You — Literally

You don’t think so? Read the excerpt from this story (HT “S.O.B.er” Interested-Participant). No further comment is needed:

Outrage as man, 88, left lying on hospital floor for four hours
FRANK URQUHART
Wed 24 May 2006POLITCIANS yesterday called for an inquiry after an 88-year-old pensioner was left lying on a hospital floor for four hours because staff were not allowed to move him.

Mitchell Cabel, a retired builder, was injured when he fell from a chair while a patient at Woodend Hospital in Aberdeen. He was wrapped in blankets, given drugs and left on the cold floor of a ward while hospital staff waited for paramedics.

His son and wife arrived at the hospital to find Mr Cable moaning in agony.

He died two weeks later as a result of kidney and heart failure.

Yesterday, as NHS Grampian issued an apology and announced that a review was already under way, MSPs joined the family in calling for an inquiry into Mr Cabel’s ordeal.

The dead man’s son, Mitch, explained that his father had been admitted to Woodend four weeks before his fall on 25 April to be treated for a urinary infection.

….. Mr Cabel said: “I was shocked at the way my father was being treated and annoyed because he had been left lying on a cold floor because the staff couldn’t lift him.

“The doctor had made repeated calls to the ambulance service, stressing the importance of my father’s situation, but nothing seemed to work.

“I was amazed. There was a doctor there and nurses you would assume would be trained in lifting. After more than three hours they put him on a mattress because the doctor felt he had been lying long enough on the floor. He was big, over 6ft tall and maybe 17 stones in weight, but he wasn’t clinically obese, as the health authorities have said.”

He added: “My father died as result of kidney failure and heart failure. I can’t say that what happened to him contributed to his death, but having kidney problems and lying on a cold floor for as long as he did hadn’t helped.”

Brian Adam, the Scottish National Party MSP for Aberdeen North and a former health service worker, told The Scotsman: “For the hospital not to have procedures in place to deal with circumstances where a patient falls is a terrible condemnation of the system.