Lying in a hospital bed working to breathe despite being oxygenated, Dr. Susan Moore, a 52-year-old black doctor, stared at her cell phone and recorded a video alleging her battle with COVID-19 he was aggravated by the treatment he underwent. received from a doctor at a suburban hospital in Indianapolis, Indiana.
“That’s how blacks are killed. When you send them home and they don’t know how to fight for themselves,” Moore said in the Dec. 4 video he posted on his North Health University Hospital Facebook page from Indiana to Carmel, Indiana, his hometown. “I had to talk to someone, maybe the media, to let people know how they treat me on this site.
“I submitted, and I maintain, if it was white, it shouldn’t go through that,” said Moore, who tested positive for COVID in late November, in his Facebook post. He added that he no longer trusted the hospital and was requesting the transfer.
Moore’s case seems to highlight a concern that health advocates have been exposed to by the pandemic: accusations that blacks and minorities suffering from COVID receive inferior medical treatment compared to whites.
Black people have also been disproportionately affected and have died more from coronavirus than their white counterparts. A Brookings Institution analysis published earlier this year showed that black people with COVID have died at a rate of 3.6 times the rate of white people.
An ABC News investigation published in April found that black people on coronavirus hot spots are twice as likely to die from the disease as their white counterparts.
Moore’s 19-year-old son, Henry Muhammed, told ABC News that his mother tested positive for COVID on Nov. 29 and went to IU North because he had been to the hospital before and was close to home. .
She said her mother was discharged on Dec. 7, but was only home for 12 hours before she had to call an ambulance to take her to a different hospital. Moore wrote on her Facebook page that when she was admitted to Ascension-St. Vincent Hospital in Carmel, his temperature had risen to 103 degrees and his blood pressure dropped to 80/60. Normal blood pressure is usually 120/80.
His son said that although his mother received much better treatment, his health gradually deteriorated and he was placed on a ventilator. He died at 1 a.m. Sunday, he said.
“I was hoping that when I got there, she would still be alive, but when they opened the ICU doors and told me she was dead … I was almost hyperventilating,” she told ABC News. “I was like,‘ Mom, I love you, mom. I love you. “And I just prayed and hoped that I would be well in heaven, that I would be better and that I would be at peace.”
Muhammed said the treatment his mother allegedly received at IU North Health angered him.
“I’m outraged beyond words … because if what my mother thinks was true and it was racism, and they neglected it for that, no one would have to go through it. The phrase ‘I can’t breathe’ is put. to a whole new context, ”he said.
“My mother was legitimately very scared. I haven’t seen her scared in a long time. She was worried about the doctor’s lack of empathy. She didn’t feel like the doctor cared about her health or her health, or whether she was getting better. or not, ”he said, adding that his mother would call him daily from IU North Hospital, often in pain and tears. “She thought about it a bit because the doctor wanted me to get out of the hospital as soon as possible and she was worried about that.”
In an email to ABC News, a spokesman for IU North Health said of Dr. Moore, “We are very sad to hear of her passing.”
“IU North respects and maintains patient privacy and cannot comment on a specific patient, their medical history or their conditions,” the hospital said in a statement. “As an organization committed to equity and the reduction of racial disparities in health, we take allegations of discrimination very seriously and investigate all allegations.”
The statement went on to say, “Treatment options are often agreed upon and reviewed by medical experts from various specialties and we maintain the commitment and experience of our caregivers and the quality of care given to our patients on a daily basis.”
Muhammed said he and his family have not decided whether to take legal action against UI North, but are exploring their appeal options.
“I was her only child. My mother and I were very close. I told her everything. She wasn’t just my mother, she was kind of my best friend. And she was always there to support me along the way. “, he said. . “It’s a very hard loss. It’s incalculable how much loss she has. You can’t measure how much my mother means to me. It’s really worrying to know she’s gone.”
She said her mother was also the primary caregiver of her parents, who both have dementia. He said he now takes care of his grandparents.
“They’ve been asking for it. I tried to tell them what was going on and … they don’t always remember it,” he said.
She said her mother decided to become a doctor after initially working as an engineer. He graduated from the University of Michigan School of Medicine in 2001, Muhammed said.
“I was born three months before I graduated from medical school,” Muhammed said.
He said they moved to Indiana when he was in high school because his mother got a job there as a visiting doctor. He said he eventually set up his own family practice in Peru, Indiana, about 60 miles north of his hometown.
“He always did things for others even almost because of a failure,” he said. “She was just a kind caregiver. The job of a doctor she had, she couldn’t find a better profession. Her passion and her ability to take care of others, was my mother.”
That’s why, she said, it infuriates her to think about how she was allegedly treated by people in her profession during the most serious moments of her life. He also said he is afraid of other blacks suffering from COVID who are not doctors and may not know how to defend themselves.
“I’m scared of these thousands of people, all of these people, and I hope this inspires change,” he said. “We can’t have that in society. We have to hold the medical community accountable.”
He said he has not yet been able to watch the video his mother posted on Facebook from the hospital.
“Listening to my mother’s voice and seeing her … it’s hard,” she said. “It brings me everything I miss about her.”