The president and CEO of an Indiana hospital has sparked a reaction to release what medical professionals and health care advocates described as a statement of “blaming the victim” for a black doctor who went died of COVID-19 after alleging he was abused by a doctor and nurses at his medical center for the color of his skin.
In a press release, Indiana University Hospital President and CEO Dennis M. Murphy described Dr. Susan Moore as a “complex patient” and said that during her stay at the facility. of IU Health North in Carmel, Indiana, nursing staff who treated her for coronavirus “may have been intimidated by a knowledgeable patient who used social media to express her concerns and criticize the care they were providing.”
Moore, 52, who operated on his own medical consultation, died at another hospital where he went a day after being discharged from IU Health North, his 19-year-old son told ABC News. Henry Muhammed.
Before being sent home from IU Health North, Moore recorded a scathing review of his treatment and posted the video on his Facebook page, saying, “I submitted, and I maintain, if it were white, I shouldn’t go through it “.
She alleged that the doctor treating her repeatedly ignored her complaints because she was in pain and wanted to send her home. According to her, that doctor initially told her she felt uncomfortable giving him painkillers and “made me feel like a drug addict,” she said on social media.
“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 Facebook page from the hospital bed of the IU Health North. “I had to talk to someone, maybe the media, to let people know how they treat me on this site.”
Muhammed told ABC News on Wednesday in a telephone interview that his mother knew his medical history better than anyone and that it should have been seen as a good thing for the medical team and not as a sign of intimidation.
“I don’t understand how knowing your medical history is intimidating for a nurse or hospital staff,” Muhammed said.
He said that apart from a chaplain of the UI health system, no medical center official has contacted him to apologize or express his regret.
In his statement, Murphy said he is “deeply saddened by his death and the loss his family is feeling.”
“I’m even more saddened by the experience he described in the video,” Murphy wrote. “Personally, it hurt me to see a patient come through social media because I felt their care was inadequate and their personal needs were not felt.”
Murphy promised to bring together a diverse group of health and diversity experts to conduct an external medical review of Moore’s concerns “to address any possible treatment bias.” At the same time, he appeared to defend the hospital staff that treated Moore.
“I don’t think we’re failing at the technical aspects of Dr. Moore’s care delivery,” Murphy wrote. “I am concerned, however, that we may not have shown the level of compassion and respect with which we strive to understand what matters most to patients. I am concerned that our care team did not have time due to the burden of this pandemic on listening to and understanding patients’ concerns and questions. “
Muhammed said he and his family have been talking to lawyers about their appeal options, but have not yet decided whether to take legal action against UI Health.
“I hope they do an honest and impartial investigation,” he said of the hospital. “But I can only hope that. I don’t know if they will.”
Moore tested positive for COVID on Nov. 29 and went to IU Health North because he had been to the hospital before and was close to home, Muhammed said.
She said her mother was discharged from IU Health North 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 his Facebook page that when he was admitted to Ascension St. Vincent in Carmel, his temperature had risen to 103 degrees and his blood pressure dropped to 80/60. Normal blood pressure is usually 120/80.
Her health continued to deteriorate and she was placed in a ventilator, her son said. He died of complications from COVID-19 on December 20th.
Moore’s ordeal has left public health advocates and medical providers disappointed in Murphy’s statement and has caused many of them to vent outrage on social media.
Dr. Theresa Chapple, a black doctor and Maryland public health advocate, wrote on Twitter that after reading Murphy’s statement, “I’m excited.”
“It’s so ridiculous and it’s also something that black people have been going through for quite some time in this country, and that includes black doctors,” Chapple told ABC News on Wednesday. “We go through this when we try to defend ourselves, when we try to defend our children. They fire us. We look angry, upset or volatile. Bullying is something new I hadn’t heard before reading this.”
Chapple said her work focuses on maternal mortality and the attempt to prevent black women from dying as a result of childbirth.
“One of the ways we can tell women what they can do to help them deal with it is to defend themselves or have an advocate for it. So now take this proven approach that we know helps in certain areas. circumstances and being able to see clearly that it doesn’t help when you’re black and polite, it’s really a slap in the face, ”Chapple said. “What else can you do to save your life?”
Christie VanHorne, a New York public health advocate whose company, CVH Consulting works to improve communication between patients and medical providers, said she was so angered by Murphy’s response that she wrote to UI Health a message complaining that the hospital was “guilty of the victims.” “Moore for the alleged inadequate attention he received.
“Honestly, it’s a disgrace to the medical profession to 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 was just trying to defend for herself.”
Dr. Camara Phyllis Jones, adjunct professor of Black at the Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta and former president of the American Public Health Association, and three of her medical colleagues wrote a published article on the Moore case published in Washington Post Saturday that Moore’s experience is more “confirmation” of racial inequalities in the country’s health care system that have surfaced during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“This system has a name: racism. As well-intentioned as our health care system is, it has not rooted the false idea of a hierarchy of human valuation based on skin color and the false idea that if there was such a hierarchy, there would be white people at the top. ” , says the opinion Jones wrote with Aletha Maybank, director of health equity for 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 been disproportionately affected and have died more from coronavirus than their white counterparts. A Brookings Institution analysis published earlier this year showed that the COVID-19 mortality rate for blacks was 3.6 times higher than that for whites.
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.
“Dr. Moore knew she was being abused. I knew I was being mistreated because I knew what I was supposed to achieve. So that makes their voice even more powerful when he called them, “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 up to an individual nurse to fix herself or an individual doctor to fix herself,” Jones said. “You have to relate to a lot of people, understanding that racism exists and that it’s a problem for the whole system.”