When your child is in pain or something is wrong, it is a natural inclination to rush them to the nearest hospital. You assume that all of the hospitals employee doctors and staff that know what they are doing. However, to many unsuspecting families in Florida, one hospital pediatric unit didn’t quite know what they were doing.
At 7 weeks old, a parents’ baby just had major heart surgery. She was recovering when her legs stopped moving. Doctors were puzzled. While in an elevator at St. Mary’s Medical Center in West Palm Beach, Florida, a stranger overheard the family talking about the child and said “do you know a child with a heart problem here?” “Yes, my daughter”, was the response. “You need to get her out of here”, the stranger warned.
Little did the family know that when they requested a transfer from the cardiologist, he came in to the patient’s room, shut the door and said “that’s a really good idea.” The parents were shocked!
As the investigation showed, by the end of 2013, the mortality rate for babies having heart surgery at this Palm Beach hospital was THREE TIMES THE NATIONAL AVERAGE! It was discovered that at least 8 babies had died since the pediatric open heart surgery program opened in late 2011. Were they using these babies as practice? These were real children and the parents depended on this hospital to fix their child. Through CNN’s investigation, these shocking details were uncovered. What if that stranger kept his/her mouth shut?
This is why it is so very important to really investigate the doctors and hospitals that you and your family use. People are not experiments.