I believe an incident similar to this came up in a forum before, but I haven't been able to find it.

On June 19, 2008, a 49 yr. old Jamaican woman collapsed and died on a waiting room floor at Kings County Medical Center, a phychiatric hospital in Brooklyn, NY, where she had been involuntarily committed 24 hours previously for 'agitation and depression.' She died in full view of security cameras, security guards, other waiting patients and medical personnel.

While the security tape shows her lying, with no movement, before 6am, her hospital record says that she was up, walking about, and had even gone to the bathroom at 6am. Obviously, the record was written after the fact.

Now, the following is conjecture, but is it possible that she'd been picked off the street by a police patrol unit and taken to the hospital? That would explain the 'involuntary' committment and the 'diagnosis' of 'agitation and depression,' wouldn't it? It might also explain her acquiescent behavior during the 24 hrs she spent waiting for a bed.

Since the hospital is a county facility, it would be financed by tax moneies, wouldn't it? Ergo, its patients wouldn't have health insurance and probably wouldn't have anywhere else to go.

What sort of health care system is that?

A tragic incident.

Complaints have been filed againt Kings County in the past for unsanitary conditions and negligent care. Above you see a silent replay of the security camera footage of the waiting room where this patient passed away.

The official diagnosis when she was brought in against her will the previous day was "agitation and psychosis", which would have indicated she was in a very riled-up state, angry and/or afraid of something manufactured by her mind, having no basis in reality. She must have been causing trouble to either herself or to others to have been involuntarily committed; it seems it was considered an emergency to take her off the streets. But she was a charity patient.... she had no health insurance.

Having no health insurance and no ability to pay means you go to the back of the line for resources. Hospitals can't refuse to treat you if you're bleeding to death on their doorstep, but they can legally refuse to give treatment to anyone who can't pony up for chemotherapy, radiation, dialusis, physical therapy, non-lifethreatening surgery, expensive medications, and, of course.... beds, which are always in short supply anyway. Beds are in short supply where they are most needed, in poor urban areas, because hospitals there can't turn a profit, and end up losing money on all the charity cases, and they get no recompense from the government, so.... inner city hospitals are closing from attrition.

The ones still open are overcrowded beyond belief. The emergency rooms are a nightmare, mostly because the uninsured poor use the emergency room for primary care. They have no insurance and can't afford a doctor bill, so they exagerate their complaints and have an ambulance haul them in at night in an attempt to get free treatment. Because of this swamping of emergency rooms by shrewd poor people looking to pick up medical freebies, the emergeny staff must perform triage on the incoming patients, to try to separate the ones who are actually ill in an emergent state from those coming in with a stuffy nose and cough, or those trying to wheedle narcotics out of the ER docs by claiming all sorts of chronic pain injuries. They are need to be checked out, and in the endless torrent, mistakes can be made.

Yes. Nurses and doctors can make mistakes. Especially when they're working a 36 hour shift in a dirty, under-funded, over-crowded ER for low wages (yes, doctors and nurses can end up with low wages).

Now, that was background for my comment about this unfortunate mental patient who passed away in the waiting room. She was detained and forcibly committed because she was agitated and psychotic. Possibly dangerous to herself or other people. Her speech and behavior may have been odd.... VERY odd. People with extreme mental problems in an agitated state are likely to be found in strange postures and positions, and in this waiting room, it's very likely that a nap on the floor was one of the least odd behaviors that had ever been witnesssed there from a psychotic pending involuntary committment. In other words... they weren't especially surprised to see the woman lying on the floor.

She'd been there a whole day waiting for a bed to free up because she was uninsured. She was napping upright in those uncomfortable chairs. She was what we usually call "crazy". If she wanted to put herself down on the floor I'm guessing that the patients who are visible next to her in the waiting room weren't shocked or worried, and may have been happy for her to be quiet for a change, if she had been agitated and talking about her delusions.

There are people sitting less than 6 feet away from her when she slumps to the floor. They might be mental patients, they might be family members of patients.... whatever they are, they glance at her, then go back nonchalontly to watching TV or chatting among themselves. No-one screams for someone to come help the poor dying woman. They assume she is sleeping or hallucinating.

I searched until I found a silent version of the video to provide here, because in all the ones with news reporter voiceovers, there is a self-righteous indignant tone as they all quite clearly say "... and they let her lie there having convulsions for an HOUR without help!!" This is clearly false, as you will see if you watch the video... there were no convulsions and people in the room while she lay dying were quite unalarmed and unimpressed with her demeanor.... she kicked her legs feebly a few times, and seemed as though she might have been trying to get up once, but certainly no convulsing. That's one of the things I hate about news reporters.... they've forgotten how to report objectively.

A couple of security guards wander through the frame, stare briefly at the prone woman, shrug, and walk away. They clearly believe she is sleeping, not dieing, same as the people sitting within a few feet of her. A man in shirtsleeves and wearing a stethescope wanders in, looks at her quickly, and turns away. That's a doctor. He thinks she's sleeping too... probably from exhaustion, or maybe from some anti-depressant he has prescribed for her agitated state. Since this story came out, the doctor has been fired for not checking on that prone body.

No-one thinks to wake her and get her off the floor.... there is no bed for her. Why should they disturb her sleep if she's actually comfortable that way? Besides... they are busy with god knows how many other indigent mental patients with similar claims for their attentions, and as long as she seems to be sleeping quietly... well, good, that's less work for the staff.

The fact is, the staff is jaded. They're tired. They're overworked. They have more patients than resources, and both the hospital board of directors and the US government says they won't pay for beds, medicine, surgery, or treatment for non-lifethretening conditions, so they will all eventually be jetisoned back onto the street anyway, with the blessing of the law and the marketplace.

They've seen too many people trying to rip the system off for free care by tieing up ambulances and teams of doctors and nurses, faking heart attacks and demanding CT scans all to try and get some narcotics. They get smelly, unbathed, foul-mouthed street people crawling with lice who stink the ward up to gut-purging levels for all other patients and staff alike, and all they want is a bed and meal for the night so they fake chest pains and the ER is forced to put them through rounds of costly tests (paid for by taxpayers) for nothing. The staff sees people from nursing homes who have been in near-vegetative states for decades getting beds and operating rooms and prime care because they have insurance, which is essentially like giving state of the art medical care to a turnip, while poor people without insurance walk away with treatable conditions that won't get treated and will ruin their lives, because no-one will pay for them.

When a nurse is finally alerted to the fact that the patient is in trouble, she kneels and feels for a carotid pulse. When she finds none, you see them all spring into action... too late. The crash cart is called, a stretcher is brought, they labor over her body briefly to no avail, but she's already gone. They didn't want her to die. They'd probably seen thousands of mental patients hurl themselves around that waiting room and sleep on the floor, supine or prone. They were over-worked.... they made a bad call.

But this medical system is rotten, from the top down, and in the end, that's why they made the bad call. That's why there were no beds for a poor crazy Jamaican lady. That's why the hospital is dirty and understaffed. This is the market controlling American health care.

Maybe it's time to re-think the system a little. Maybe less poor Jamaican ladies will die on ER floors.

Dieing in full view of a few poeple is nothing new. Security camera videos being shown on the nightly news or being posted on the web is fairly new. Is there a point to this one being shown? Is it to enlighten people to the horrible conditions or is someone suing the hospital on behalf of the dead woman and this is part of that process? Or is it just info-tainment?


Did the record mention when she had been fed in the 24 hours since she was admitted to the waiting room? She was diagnosed apparently with something that required bed space. Was sitting in the waiting room chair just a pre-bed condition? She might have died in a bed as well as on the floor.


It sounds like in this case it was a matter of no where else to be taken. Involuntary would indicate she wasn't necessarily looking for a place to go. Being a phychiatric hospital it may very well take patients who have insurance and being a county facility may be forced to take some that don't.


The sort we seem to have. Should we strive for one where noone dies on the floor even if it's all they can afford? Should we keep these situations out of camera view?

She didn't freeze to death on the floor. I assume there wasn't anything particularly dangeroius about the floor that caused her death. Did she just not hold out long enough to get help because the hospital hadn't gotten to her number yet? Did the nurse finally attend her because she was next in line or for some other reason? Is this just another way to get ones fifteen minutes of fame or is it suppose to mean someting?

This would certainly seem to be the "final straw" for a facility that has run completely amok. I agree that some wholesale restructuring of something or other is in order.


That is a good question. Just because I'm too lazy to google it myself, does anyone know whether the Kings County Medical Center is a privately owned and operated facility, or is it operated by the State of New York?

I going to guess this is operated by the State of New York and that a privately owned hospital would not have to allow the security video to be released. Or the patient through the doors in the first place.

I'm just guessing not googling.

It's a public hospital operated by Kings County {Brooklyn) New York.

Ahhh, thank you. I sort of thought it might be, simply by the name of the place (although I'll admit that's no guarantee) but then I was confused. Somebody was talking about how "this medical system is rotten, from the top down, and in the end, that's why they made the bad call."

And then there was: "This is the market controlling American health care." And I thought, "market controlling?" As in free enterprise? But then you cleared things up by confirming this is government run health care in Kings County (Brooklyn) New York. Thank you.

What's your point? That conservatives will use this example and the womans death to further thier agenda without regard to wheher it is better or not? Which private hospital would take in the mentally ill and uninsured and provide better care than this lady recieved? Which insurer would insure the mentally ill in an affordable way and how could they possibly do that? Do you want to pay part of your premiums to cover the less able to pay?

My point is that the Kings County Hospital is overseen by, and run by the State of New York, i.e. government. It is NOT a private concern. That's all. It is run by the government. What is your point?

It doesn't look like much to me in the video. I also doubt the staff felt she was in a life-threatening state or this probably wouldn't have happened. Stuff happens but in this world if someone dies then someone has to sue. Being overworked would be a stupid stance for the staff to take in defense of whatever they are being accused of in my opinion. It just looked to me like the staff didn't thing her life was in danger.

Back when I was real sick once I laid on the floor for 4 hours because that is the only place I could find any comfort at all. It was almost like joke about knowing you have had enough to drink when you have to hold onto the floor to keep from falling off, except I wasn't drunk. The doctors asked about me once I told them why I was on the floor and they didn't ask me again. They weren't neglecting me, they were doing what I asked them to do and let me lay there. They didn't know what was wrong with me but they were confident I wasn't dying. (We figured out what was wrong with me a few days later when I turned yellow.)