Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Catch-up inspections find problems in 14 of22 PA abortion clinics

HT: Jivin' J

Checks of Pa. abortion clinics find some problems:

In a September visit to the Hillcrest Women's Medical Center in Harrisburg, equipment was found well past expiration date. Also found was an unlabeled bag of blue pills and practices that raised patient confidentiality concerns.


Hillcrest is the National Abortion Federation member where Kelly Morse died after being given medication she'd told staff she was allergic to.

Even after Kelly had trouble breathing and started turning blue, abortionist Delhi Thweatt continued with the abortion, then spent some time providing ineffectual care to Kelly before having an ambulance summoned.

The suit filed by Kelly's husband noted, "As Mrs. Morse's dyspnea (difficulty breathing) and cyanosis [turning blue due to lack of oxygen] continued to worsen, Defendant Thweatt improperly administered Epinephrine subcutaneously instead of intravenously...." This measure would do nothing to assist a patient in Kelly's condition.

"No one started an IV. No respiration rate was recorded, no pulse was checked and no blood pressure was measured. No EKG was applied. No cardiac monitoring was conducted. No pulse oximeter was applied. No intubation or emergency tracheotomy was performed. No oxygen was administered. Kelly continued to agitate in fear, desperately gasping for air, and remained blue in color. Defendant Thweatt just stood there with a stethoscope in hand and listened to Kelly's breathing and wheezing progressively worsen."

"As Plaintiff choked and gasped for air, none of the Defendants, took steps to immediately dispatch an ambulance. In fact, the ambulance was not summoned until 11:24 a.m., or 10 minutes after Plaintiff violently choked, gasped, wheezed, and discolored to a blue-black appearance from respiratory arrest and hypoxia."

Paramedics arrived within five minutes of the call, just as a staff member was running outside to summon Kelly's husband. Kelly's husband reported that he went in with the ambulance crew to find his wife, naked and blue-black from lack of oxygen, lying on a table that was halfway out of the examination room into the hallway.

The paramedics put a breathing tube into Kelly, properly administered medications, and performed CPR as they transported Kelly to nearby Polyclinic Medical Center, where she was admitted to the Intensive Care Unit. Her condition continued to deteriorate, and she was pronounced dead on June 22.

6 comments:

OperationCounterstrike said...

These sound like very minor problems.

Christina Dunigan said...

KILLING A WOMAN is a MINOR problem?

Anonymous said...

If you don't know which equipment was out of date, and the health risks that this might pose, then how can you pronounce that this is a minor problem.

OperationCounterstrike said...

I bet if you inspected, say, all the orthopedic surgeon's offices in Pennsylvania, you'd find just as many minor violations. Equipment passed the experation date, etc.

OperationCounterstrike said...

No, gg, I'm talking about the violations of the 14 abortion clinics in pennsylvania, not about killing a patient.

Christina Dunigan said...

1. This place's sloppy practices killed a woman. That they're letting things expire doesn't speak well of them. When I was an EMT, we went through both ambulances DAILY to check on expiration dates. NOTHING was kept or used past its expiration date. So if a medical facility is letting things expire, that's a sign of just running a slipshod operation. The kind of operation that killed Kelly Morse.

2. Orthopedic surgeons don't kill people for a living, but get away with it because they promised they'd only kill one person at a time.