> Every hospital in this city (and I'm guessing everywhere in this country) offers better service for VIPs and their families. None of this is limited to just NYU.

Yes, VIPs will get better care than regular patients who get standard care. Shouldn't be happening, but there's no way to completely prevent that. But that's not what's happening here.

We're talking about regular patients getting unacceptably substandard levels of care precisely so that VIPs can get the gold standard. That is so mindblowingly wrong on so many levels. And I'm really upset by the amount of comments here that are giving NYU a pass for this, and this comment chain is one of the worst examples.

Let me tell you an actual story that shows what effect this can have. It comes from a friend whom I will now advise to lawyer up fast.

In late January, my friend brought in his mom to the NYU ER during a weekday evening, driven by her husband (friend's dad) to the hospital. She was an employee for the NYS Dept of Financial Services. Had decent insurance as a state civil servant. She could walk in on her own and was completely lucid, though she had lost substantial weight. She was thinking of going to the hospital during Fall 2021, but avoided going bc of the COVID surge then. Her weight loss worried her family so much that the son set things in motion to get her medical care.

They gave her a ER bed in the hallway pretty quickly. They had to wait an hour or two before they could do blood work and a CT scan. To their credit, they moved her bed behind a curtain after a time, but everything goes downhill from there.

From the CT scan, the doctors concluded that she had end-stage colorectal cancer, with weeks left to live. They were shocked since, according to her, a colonoscopy done just before COVID was negative. They asked repeatedly for a biopsy and/or a stool test for more conclusive results, but the doctors wouldn't hear of it. Given this article, I wonder if that's because that was being prioritized for richer patients. Could also be bc she wouldn't take blood transfusions (she was a Jehovah's Witness). I have no idea, but I digress.

Long story short, her 16 hour stay in the ER was a tale of neglect. Was technically admitted into the hospital during late night hours, but nothing was done to move her into an actual room. Apparently, that ER bed was really uncomfortable too. Around 6 AM or so, she got a sandwich and water that SHE had to request from the nurse.

The bedside manner of hospital staff was also apparently lacking. Even though the oncology team wouldn't show up until morning, surgeons and other staff were circulating in and out of the room lamenting what little they could do for her. When she and her son pressed them for hard details, they kept copping out by saying that their advice was only preliminary, and the oncology team had the last word.

The son left at 3AM, intending to return later in the morning. According to him, his mom told him that the conga line of staff continued thru the morning. It seems the oncology team came late in the morning, but were doing a poor job of keeping her in the loop. Just kept popping in, saying what a sick woman she was. Weren't responding much to her questions about what they can do, except to say that they were still deciding. It seems she saw staff just beyond the curtains conferencing among themselves about her condition, and weren't saying much to her.

Around noon, she decided that she had enough. Got up, got dressed, checked herself out of the ER and took a taxi home to Queens. Showed up at her home just as her son was about to leave for NYU. He sez that NYU called them, saying that he should convince her to come back. However, he and his dad said that they found it hard to do so given the conditions that she just left. To me, I guess the mom decided that if this was the end, she wanted to share it with her family.

She was okay for roughly a week afterward, as the family was looking for other doctors to go for a second opinion. The son tried to convince her to go see other doctors, but she was reluctant given her experience at NYU. Her condition deteriorated rapidly as February began. She had to go to another hospital in Queens, where she died within days of entry. She was in her mid 60s.

Officially, her cause of death was "suspected late-stage colorectal cancer". Neither NYU or the other hospital (LIJ Forest Hills) did colonoscopies, biopsies or stool tests that could have been more conclusive. Though in LIJ's defense, the mom probably wasn't in a state to take those tests at that point.

Once again, she was a employee at the NYS Dept of Financial Services. She helped handle FOIL requests from all over the country, and apparently was a respected member of her office. She was firmly a member of NYC's middle class, with good insurance, and this is the way she was treated. So I can only imagine what happened with poorer patients.

Plus, keep in mind that the family still doesn't know what exactly killed her. While it very well could have been cancer, the small chance exists that it was something else. Maybe it was something curable if it was caught in time, maybe not. The point is that, when she entered NYU, she was underweight and anemic. But according to the son, she was still completely functional (which is truly amazing). She could have taken a stool test at the very least.

Honestly, reading this article made my blood boil. I found it really hard to reconcile their experience with NYU's sterling reputation. This article helps it make more sense, though it's still a horror. And again, based on this article, I'm going to advise my friend to consult with a lawyer ASAP.

If the double standard in this story has anything to do with my friend's mother, this is one case where that double standard potentially turned deadly.