Ginormous Headache

The medical center gets all kinds of complaints and in almost every one the person filling the complaint threatens a lawsuit. The latest was from a patient's attorney that claimed she was discriminated against because of her disabilities and requested a cash settlement to prevent a "large lawsuit from moving forward". When I looked into the case, I found that first she was disabled. She had severe arthritis, backpain, diabetes, could not walk, in fact she could not even care for herself. She was on Medicare, Medicaid and had Social Security Disability. Secondly, I found out she was 780 pounds. I looked into the case further and found two notes from the nurse manager of the floor. The patient had filled a complaint two hours after she was admitted because she was not allowed to smoke. Since she was admitted for a respiratory condition amoung other things, the attending physician said no. She then demanded that she be allowed to smoke anyway in the room. When she was told that she could not smoke in the hospital (which is the law) she demanded to be taken outside to smoke. (It took 9 ems personell to transport her to the hospital, 7 to get her onto the "Big Boy Hospital Bed".) When her nurse said that they could not roll her bed outside for her to smoke she then demanded to be put in a wheelchair. (The max load of the Big Boy wheel chairs is 600). When the nurse said that they didn't have a wheen chair big enough, the patient went off further.

So, the long and short of it, this was an attempt to "extort by attorney" money from the medical center by a patient who is disabled because of obesity who claims she was discriminated against because other patients were allowed to go out and smoke!