On January 31st, 47-year-old Grisel Soto was rushed to Coney Island Hospital, screaming in pain and unable to speak. She suffered multiple heart attacks overnight and was dead the next morning. Now, the family is threatening legal action, and three of the hospital's top officials are stepping down from their positions, the New York Times reports.
According to initial reports after Soto's death, hospital personnel seriously botched her treatment. Rather than taking her pain seriously, her husband said, the triage nurse determined that Soto's symptoms matched those of people reacting to synthetic marijuana, and had her restrained and sedated.
"I told her, 'No, she don’t do any drugs,'" her husband told CBS New York in February. "And she kept on [saying], 'She has been smoking synthetic weed.' She kept on talking to the rest of the staff and they all started laughing about it."
Soto's family believes that she had meningitis, but won't know for sure for some time; her death is currently under investigation by the city medical examiner's office.
According to the NY Post, her death prompted a review of the hospital's hiring practices, which found that hundreds of nursing staff had been hired without the approval of NYC Health and Hospitals Corporation (HHC), the group that runs CIH and 10 other city hospitals. The Times notes that the city disputes this claim about unauthorized hiring, and that HHC says that the administrative shakeup is unrelated to Soto's case.
One of the executives stepping down from Coney Island Hospital is retiring, while the other two will be taking different positions with HHC. A spokesperson for HHC said Friday that "it was decided that changes were necessary to improve the patient experience...Our goal is to provide an exceptional experience to every patient and their family, and we are committed to the appropriate changes to deliver on that promise."
According to the Times, Soto's family has retained personal injury attorney Sanford Rubenstein (whose name you may know for other reasons), who has filed a complaint with the state's Health Department and may pursue more legal action against the hospital.
