It was a devastating piece of journalism. Ethan’s case anchored the article, but it did not stand alone. Christine detailed other patients Vance had dismissed as drug seekers or hypochondriacs who later turned out to have serious medical emergencies. A young woman with a pulmonary embolism. A teenage boy with a perforated ulcer. A laborer with a bowel obstruction. A college athlete whose severe testicular pain was waved off and who nearly lost a testicle to torsion because the initial exam had been cursory and contemptuous. The article connected the complaints, the quiet settlements, the administrative inertia, and the broader issue of bias in emergency medicine. It asked the question hospitals hate most because it cannot be answered with a press release: how many people had to be harmed before anyone decided a pattern was a pattern?
My son called from the emergency room before dawn and said, “Dad, the doctor is refusing to treat me. He says I’m faking it for drugs.” When I got there, the doctor’s s…
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