For “malpractice of considerable magnitude.” This is how the judge of the Contentious-Administrative Court 2 of Almería argues her ruling, by which she condemns the SAS (Andalusian Health Service) to compensate the family of the 74-year-old woman who died in the Emergency Room of the University Hospital with 200,000 euros. Torrecárdenas in 2019. The victim would have died after spending an “extremely excessive amount of time” without “being treated” by the doctor assigned to him despite the fact that his admission was classified as level II or a vital emergency.
The judge indicates that the Almeria hospital incurred in “malpractice of considerable magnitude” and emphasizes that, in this case, “it is not that there was a delay in care, but rather that the doctor did not even know that he was assigned it.” while highlighting that the presence of the “dependent” patient went “unnoticed, simply and unfortunately, by everyone, except for the nurse who performed the triage.”
The ruling rejects the allegations in the oral hearing of the center’s Medical Directorate regarding a “high care pressure” that day or about “technical errors with failures” in the switchboard and disgraces the insurance company involved in the lawsuit for its “almost attempt amoral and desperate to try to blame the deceased’s husband for not realizing that his wife was not breathing.
“Spain is a solvent country in the field of healthcare, with material and human resources that are even an international benchmark in some fields, which is why it cannot allow the death of a patient at risk of life-threatening emergency while in hospital. an emergency room of a public hospital without being attended to,” the resolution concludes.
The events occurred on April 2, 2019. The patient was transferred by ambulance from the residential center where she was admitted to the Torrecárdenas Hospital, where she was classified as level II emergency between 12:37 and 12:41 p.m. .
The woman died in the waiting room between 1:30 and 2:00 p.m. according to the autopsy report “while waiting to be treated and without any professional noticing her.” It was one of her daughters who, upon her arrival at the center, “noticed that her mother was not breathing.”
The magistrate maintains that medical protocols state that patients in level II must be treated in “15 minutes” and emphasizes that the doctor assigned to her declared at police headquarters that “he found out everything the next day, through the media.” .
“It seems that the cause of this non-attendance was an error by the doctor, who did not even see the assignment on the computer without it being proven that there was a computer failure or that the nurse who carried out the triage did not correctly carry out said assignment in the system “he points out.
The ruling also criticizes the fact that the “auxiliary surveillance personnel” in the waiting room “were conspicuous by their absence” and did not check “what their condition was”, the patient being “a dependent person, of advanced age, with a condition of drowsy, did not respond to stimuli and was wearing a mask.
“How can one try to blame the husband for not noticing the death, being absolutely logical that he could think that his wife had simply fallen asleep, when the question that should be asked is where was the doctor who was supposed to treat her in less than 15 minutes and where? there was the auxiliary staff guarding the waiting room,” says the magistrate.
The ruling, against which there is an appeal to the Superior Court of Justice of Andalusia (TSJA), considers proven the “infringement of the lex artis” put forward by the lawyer Ignacio Martínez on behalf of the family and calls it a “considerable magnitude.” “, which rules out that the doctrine of loss of opportunity to which the SAS appeals can be applied.
“This is a patient who died in a hospital while waiting to be treated, having alarming circumstances that had determined a level II of vital urgency, in which case the protocols marked a delay time in being treated by a professional of 15 minutes,” he points out, adding that an hour and a half without attention and supervision “is an extremely excessive time.”
To set the amount of compensation, the judge takes into account the advanced age and the “underlying multiple pathologies”, and resolves 100,000 euros for the widower and 25,000 euros for each of the four appellant children.
The ‘Patient Ombudsman’ association has criticized the way of proceeding by the SAS and its insurer “with insulting and amoral arguments that have done nothing but gratuitously increase the family’s pain” and has demanded that the SAS “open an investigation to clarify responsibilities in the face of such a clear case of malpractice and ask for forgiveness.”
As stated in the ruling, the criminal proceedings initiated as a result of the family’s complaint were archived. He also indicates that “among the improvements to be implemented in the hospital after this event is greater control of the staff in the waiting rooms since it was not being done well.”
