‘Greatest Health Care System In The World’? No.
He walked into Saint Barnabas Hospital asking to be treated for a rash — but more than eight hours later, Jon Verrier was found dead in his chair in the crowded ER waiting room, hospital officials concede.
The 30-year-old amateur artist may have been dead for hours, according to a mortified employee who was there in the Bronx emergency room Monday morning when the corpse was finally discovered.
“He was found stiff, blue and cold,” the employee said, speaking to ABC News on condition of anonymity. “He died because [there’s] not enough staff to take care of the number of patients we see each day. We need more staff at Saint Barnabas.”
Officials at the 461-bed facility said Verrier checked into the ER at 10 p.m. Sunday and was found dead at 6:40 the next morning.
Upon his arrival, he was registered, triaged and told to wait to see a doctor, said Saint Barnabas spokesman Steve Clark, adding that Verrier was told to wait inside the ER itself but for some reason returned to the waiting room and took a seat.
Between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m., his name was called “two or three times” and he did not answer, Clark said.
At 2 a.m., a security guard made a pass through the waiting room to roust the many homeless people who try to sleep there.
“Nothing was awry — he was moving, he was alive” during that 2 a.m. check, Clark said.
Surveillance video from elsewhere in the hospital recorded Verrier alive and “moving” at 3:45 a.m., Clark said.
“Then after 6, when security did another pass, he was dead,” the hospital spokesman said.
“His name was called several times on several occasions, and he did not respond,” Clark added, stressing that an in-house review found “all guidelines were met.”
Because God forbid that the hospital didn’t follow their absolutely infallible guidelines.
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By: dave-dr-gonzo
David Hirsch, a.k.a. Dave "Doctor" Gonzo*, is a renegade record producer, video producer, writer, reformed corporate shill, and still-registered lobbyist for non-one-percenter performing artists and musicians. He lives in a heavily fortified compound in one of Manhattan's less trendy neighborhoods.
* Hirsch is the third person to use the pseudonym, a not-so-veiled tribute to journalist and author Hunter S. Thompson, with the permission of his predecessors Gene Gaudette of American Politics Journal (currently webmaster and chief bottlewasher at Liberaland) and Stephen Meese at Smashmouth Politics.