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Reform Pledged After Woman Dies On Hospital Floor

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The Associated Press

Published: July 2, 2008

NEW YORK - NEW YORK - City hospital officials promised reforms at a Brooklyn psychiatric ward where surveillance footage captured a woman falling from her chair, writhing on the floor and dying as workers watched without helping for more than an hour.

Esmin Green, 49, had been waiting in the emergency room for nearly 24 hours when she toppled from her seat at 5:32 a.m. on June 19, falling face down on the floor.

She was dead by 6:35, when someone on the medical staff, flagged down by a person in the waiting room, finally approached, nudged Green with her foot, and gently prodded her shoulder, as if to wake her. The staff member left and returned with someone wearing a white lab coat who examined her and summoned help.

Until the staff member's appearance, Green's collapse barely caused a ripple. Other patients a few feet away didn't react. Security guards and a member of the hospital's staff appeared to notice her prone body at least three times, but made no visible attempt to see if she needed help.

One guard didn't even leave his chair, rolling it around a corner to stare at the body, then rolling away a few moments later.

Green, who had been involuntarily committed the previous morning, and had waited overnight for a bed, stopped moving about half an hour after she collapsed.

The New York City Health and Hospitals Corp., which runs the hospital, said six people have been fired as a result of the incident, including security personnel and members of the medical staff.

Green's medical records raised the possibility that someone might have tried to cover up the circumstances of the death. They contained notations indicating that she was up and about during the time in which the video shows her dying on the floor.

"We are all shocked and distressed by this situation," HHC's president, Alan Aviles, said in a statement.

Details of the death were disclosed by the hospital on June 20, but the case largely remained unnoticed until the video became public.

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