The president and CEO of an Indiana hospital have sparked a backlash over what the medical profession and health care advocates have described as a statement of “guilt for the victim” over a black doctor who died of COVID-19 after claiming she had been abused by a doctor and nurses at his medical facility due to the color of her skin.
In a press release, President and CEO of Indiana University Hospital, Dennis M. Murphy, describes dr. Susan Moore as a “complicated patient” and says the nursing staff treating her for coronavirus during her stay at the IU Health North facility in Carmel, Indiana. “can be intimidated by a knowledgeable patient who has used social media to voice her concerns and criticize the care they have provided.”
Moore, 52, who runs her own family practice, died in another hospital after which she died a day after being discharged from IU Health North, her 19-year-old son, Henry Muhammed, told ABC News.
Before being sent home from IU Health North, Moore recorded a serious investigation into her treatment and posted the video on her Facebook page, saying, ‘I suggest it, and I maintain that if I were white, I would would not have to go through that. “
She claimed that the doctor who was treating her repeatedly ignored her complaints that she was in pain and wanted to send her home. According to her, the doctor initially said that he felt uncomfortable giving her painkillers and ‘made me feel like a drug addict’, she said on social media.
“This is how black people are killed. If you send them home and they do not know how to fight for themselves,” Moore said in the Dec. 4 video she posted on her Facebook page from her hospital bed at IU Health North. “I had to talk to someone, maybe to the media, to let people know how I was treated in this place.”
Muhammed said in a telephone interview with ABC News on Wednesday that his mother knew her own medical history better than anyone else and should be seen as an asset to the medical team and not as a sign of intimidation.
“I do not understand how the knowledge of your medical history is intimidating to a nurse or hospital staff,” Muhammed said.
He said that apart from a chaplain from the IU Health system reaching out to him, no medical center officials had contacted him to apologize or repent.
In his statement, Murphy said he was “saddened by her death and the loss her family is experiencing.”
“I’m even sadder about the experience she described in the video,” Murphy wrote. “It has hurt me personally to see a patient reach out via social media because they feel that their care is inadequate and that their personal needs are not being heard.”
Murphy has promised to put together a diverse panel of healthcare and diversity experts to conduct an external medical examination of Moore’s concerns “to address potential treatment biases.” At the same time, he apparently defended the hospital staff that treated Moore.
‘I do not believe that we have the technical aspects of the care of dr. Moore did not fail, ‘Murphy wrote. “However, I am concerned that we may not have shown the degree of compassion and respect we strive to understand that is most important to patients. I am concerned that our care team did not have the time due to the burden of this pandemic to hear and understand patients ‘questions and questions.’
Muhammed said he and his family had talked to lawyers about their options to use, but had not yet decided whether to take legal action against IU Health.
“I hope they do an honest, unbiased investigation,” he said of the hospital. “But I can only hope so. I do not know if they will do that. ‘
Moore tested positive for COVID on Nov. 29 and went to IU Health North because she had been in the hospital before and it was near her home, Muhammed said.
He said his mother was discharged from IU Health North on December 7, but that she was only home for 12 hours before he had to call an ambulance to rush her to another hospital. Moore wrote on her Facebook page that she was in the Ascension St. Vincent Hospital in Carmel, and that her temperature rose to 103 degrees, and that her blood pressure dropped to 80/60. Normal blood pressure is usually 120/80.
Her health was still deteriorating, and she was placed in a ventilator, her son said. She died of complications from COVID-19 on December 20th.
Moore’s trial has left public health advocates and medical providers disappointed with Murphy’s statement and encouraged many of them to express their outrage on social media.
Dr. Theresa Chapple, a black physician and public health advocate from Maryland, wrote on Twitter that after reading Murphy’s statement, “I feel gaslight.”
“It’s so ridiculous and also something black people have been going through in this country for some time, and that includes black doctors,” Chapple told ABC News on Wednesday. “We went through it when we tried to plead for ourselves when we tried to plead for our children. We are fired. We are seen as angry, upset or unstable. Intimidating is a new one I had not yet heard before I read it. ‘
Chapple said her work is focused on maternal mortality and on preventing black women from dying as a result of childbirth.
“One of the ways we can tell women that they can help address this is to plead for themselves or to have a lawyer with them. Following this proven approach we know now helps under certain circumstances can clearly see that it does not help if you are black and trained, it is really a slap in the face, “Chapple said.” What else can you do to save your own life? “
Christie VanHorne, a New York public health advocate whose firm CVH Consulting works to improve communication between patients and medical providers, said she felt so angry about Murphy’s response that she wrote a message from IU Health and complains that the hospital is becoming a victim. “Moore for the alleged inadequate care she received.
“It is honestly a disgrace to the medical profession that they will blame the victim and the nursing team,” VanHorne told ABC News on Wednesday. ‘To say that the nurses were intimidated by the patient is absolutely ridiculous when she’s just trying to plead for herself. ‘
Dr. Camara Phyllis Jones, a black deputy professor at the Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta and former president of the American Public Health Association, and three of her medical professional colleagues wrote an op-ed on Moore’s case published in Washington is. Post said on Saturday that Moore’s experience is more a ‘confirmation’ of racial inequalities in the country’s healthcare system that emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The system has a name: racism. No matter how well our healthcare system is intended, it has not erased the false idea of a hierarchy of human valuation based on skin color and the false idea that ‘white’ people would be if they were such a hierarchy. . the top, “reads the recorded Jones written with Aletha Maybank, chief health officer at the American Medical Association, Uché Blackstock, founder and CEO of Advancing Health Equity, and Joia Crear Perry, president of the National Birth Equity Collaborative.
Black people have also become disproportionate and die more than their white counterparts from the coronavirus. An analysis released by the Brookings Institution earlier this year showed that the COVID-19 mortality rate for black people was 3.6 times the percentage of white people.
A study by ABC News published in April found that black people in hotspots for the coronavirus are twice as likely to die from the disease as their white counterparts.
“Dr. Moore knew she was being abused. She knew she was being abused because she knew what she was going to get. So it made her voice even more powerful when she called them out,” Jones told ABC News on Wednesday.
Jones said IU Health must recognize that systemic racism exists in its system before it can solve the problem.
“It’s not one nurse who has to fix themselves, or one doctor to fix themselves,” Jones said. “You have to involve a lot of people because you understand that racism exists and that it is a problem. for the whole system. “