Woman Dies After Leaving ER For Urgent Care After Waiting Hours For Treatment | NBC Nightly News

The family of 25-year-old Shonna Ward is demanding answers after she waited so long in an emergency room that she left for urgent care and died. Ward went to the hospital for chest pains and trouble breathing and was seen for an EKG and chest x-ray, according to the medical examiner. Ward left for urgent care after writing on Facebook that she was told it could be 6 hours before she could see a doctor.

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Woman Dies After Leaving ER For Urgent Care After Waiting Hours For Treatment | NBC Nightly News

[abhisunkara]

They charge thousands of dollars and these incidents still happen.

[kevinsmith]

I was in the er for over almosy 2 hrs with a dog bite to my hand and leg....my hand was almost the size of a child baseball glove...smh. rest in peace ...so sorry for their loss. Health system in general is a travesty..more people taking pills by the time they are 35 and that's crazy. The wealthiest nation is also the sickest. Wow

[EW-uwdg]

I recently was at an ER and the waiting area was empty but I was told it would be a long wait, seemed as if the triage (three of them sitting and doing nothing) were trying to get us to leave. This is nothing new in hospitals, they have become awful and fail to diagnose. My condolences to the family.

[frankjones]

The problem is people going to the er who don’t need it are clogging the whole system.

[Hey_its_Koda]

Where i live the ER makes you wait 5 to 6 hrs. The doc only see you for 5 mins.

[bimma.]

That is sad ER hospital take forever to get checked left hours on waiting

[davidellis]

I had a 12 hour ER wait. When admitted was told I was hours from death. Spent 2 weeks in hospital.

[christinecormier]

INCOMPETENCE when some one says they are having trouble breathing don't just take their age into consideration. Gross negligence imho.

[boofert.washington]

Lesson: if you have heart issues and they tell you to wait, you act dizzy and collapse. They'll sprint to you and get you back to see a doctor. Learn to play the system, folks.

[shiftlight]

Urgent care would've sent you directly back to the ER for chest pain

[SonOfGOD]

Wow. My mother worked at a hospital for 38 years. She always told me that if you came into the ER complaining of chest pains and shortness of breath that you were supposed to go straight back and be treated immediately

[samiamcramertruth]

Dying to see a doctor. Literally. This is very upsetting. They need another manager to manage the staff.
Monitor what is getting done.
Keep the pace moving.

[Squeenix]

I once spent 14 hours waiting in an emergency room. You could say that perhaps my condition wasn't that bad but I had an infection in my abdomen and actually went through surgery once the doctors finally saw me.

[kirkboswell]

This doesn't make sense to me. Retired RN with 30 years in the ER. Yes, ER's get busy. Yes, there can be a six hour wait to see a doctor UNLESS your triage nurse identifies things that make a patient more urgent and that moves you up the line automatically.
There's a comment about an EKG showing an enlarged heart. Now, that doesn't automatically move things along because young athletes typically have enlarged (but healthy) hearts - BUT they said she was having chest pain as well.
When I was working, any time a symptom caught my attention enough to initiate testing, I made sure that was ALL that there was. This lady had more. I would have moved her to a bed and started a monitor on her.
I once had a lab technician complain about how often I monitored patients. When he saw one of those patients slip into V-tach right before his eyes, he never complained any more.
The hospital in question had the beginnings of a good triage system because they got an EKG, but they didn't finish the process because they should have put her in a bed, started a monitor, gotten a portable chest x-ray, and drawn her blood. That's my opinion.

[sylviag]

The best way to be seen if it's urgent is by ambulance. Sat for hours with an appendix ready to burst minute my husband said we call an ambulance they took me in.

[garyaugustus]

In 2012, I went to emergency at LSU medical on Gravier St. in NOLA because I wrenched my back at work. I went in at 2 in the afternoon and didn't leave until 2am.. Workers were shuckin' an jivin', eating...I had to endure and wait it out because I was in pain and needed the meds... 12 hours!

[phenozenointergalacticfede]

I in 2015' in Austin, Tx took a friend to what was called Breckenridge Hospital for a severe cut on the inside of his left upper thigh down past his knee to the back of his calf due to fallen on some old rebar that was enbeded in concrete. We got the cut to stop bleeding wrapped it up with clean towels and made the 35 minute trip to the hospital. Talked to admission and they put him on a gurrney down the hall from 10am and no one not one nurse not a doctor even the security guard said he noticed it and at 5pm he started to complain that his leg was numb up to his waist to one nurse. Her reply was your just going to have to wait your turn just like the rest! This man was 59' good health covered in blood and was obviously in shock and at 9:45went into cardiac arrest and died in that hallway that night. The medical examiner report said death due to loss of blood and toxic shock caused his death. The worst part was that the hospital didn't even call his family until the next day and i sat there for almost 28 hrs before I knew he passed. RIP! JESSE R. YOU DONT HAVE TO SUFFER AND WAIT IN LINE LIKE THE REST!😞🙏

[romel]

If you have this type of emergency it's best to call an ambulance since patients arriving by ambulance are usually given priority. Better to live and deal with an ambulance bill than die. Any chest pain that makes you feel weak, anxious, shortness of breath, feeling of dread, call 911 and wait for the ambulance. You will be seen sooner than rushing to the ER, finding a parking spot, walking to the counter, and then finally sign in and wait to be seen.

[sagetheassassin]

How could they let this happen??? If she says her chest feels weird, GIVE HER TREATMENT ASAP!!!

stupid healthcare system :(

[Vinsternator]

I went into an ER while my father was having a surgery to remove Invasive MRSA from his bone.
I walked up to the window and asked which way I should walk and the woman (who was playing on her phone) got obviously annoyed with me and told me to wait at the back of the line...
Wait at the back of the line for directions to my father who was having surgery...she told me to wait...in a time of emergency...