Lying Liars

[chinders]

This makes me _unspeakably angry_. This is the sort of treatment I was afraid of when Morgan was born. Our hospital was incredibly awesome and we had no trouble, but when you leave shit like this up to individual organizations with little to nothing in the way of repercussions, bad shit happens. This is fucking unacceptable.

Hospital tells pregnant

Comments

[artan_eter]

Generally I find that if you don't write up all your own law, one will be provided for you, usually not the one you want. We're actually rather behind on our legal documentation, though it's in process. In general though anything that's nonstandard (and they never tell you what nonstandard is, so best to check) is best to prepare for (including "standard" stuff such as the definition of marriage changing from state to state (ignore same-sex, think common-property and other responsibilities and definitional parameters before you even get to defining who has access).

It's all a big mess really, and not all that far from trial-by-combat, it's just that Champions now wear suits and extralegal dunkings are on the evening news...

whispercricket and I used to be good at getting everything done in backup documentation but have become lax at such lately. In process of getting that fixed though.

[chinders]

Yeah, we had all of our powers of attorney and so forth, but the problem is that hospitals have been known to actually ignore that. It really doesn't matter how good your documentation is, it matters how realistic you sound when you threaten lawyers. Which is great and all for us middle class priveliged types, but not so good for many others. Talk about preying on the weak. As far as I am concerned, there is not enough contempt in the world for people who try to keep loved ones away from sick people.

[artan_eter]

hospitals have been known to actually ignore that

Yeah, there's all that kind of really disturbing "I reject to your right to my healthcare services based on my obscure religious issues, and have specifically got into this line of work to get in your way" type laws out there. Then there's just people who bully their position because they can get away with it.

it matters how realistic you sound when you threaten lawyers

At least in this case they seem to be getting publicity after the fact, so can post-threaten lawyers and get some kind of retribution and publicity for the problem so that policies like that can be stomped out.

[whispercricket]

When we transferred to Lowell General with KJ, some of the papers that were in the default package were health care proxies, and there were people on the floor who could witness / notarize / help with whatever was needed for that. This was in a city with a high percentage of lower income / English as a second language people.

I know MA has a reputation of being better about that sort of thing and everything (also, this wasn't a religion-affiliated hospital), but I just wanted to point it out as an example of how a hospital can help with getting that sort of paperwork in order, versus it making it harder for families to focus on the important part (getting people well).

[makellan]

At a guess, the Health Department or whichever department of the Nevada State Government that deals with hospitals is going to come down on this hospital in a big way. If it's ignoring one law, what else is it ignoring?