By Sarah Kliff and Jessica Silver-Greenberg

In New York University’s busy Manhattan emergency department, Room 20 is special.

Steps away from the hospital’s ambulance bay, the room is outfitted with equipment to perform critical procedures or isolate those with highly infectious diseases.

Doctors say Room 20 is usually reserved for two types of patients: Those whose lives are on the line. And those who are V.I.P.s.

In September 2021, doctors were alerted that Kenneth G. Langone, whose donations to the university’s hospital system had led it to be renamed in his honor, was en route. The octogenarian had stomach pain, and Room 20 was kept empty for him, medical workers said. Upon his arrival, Mr. Langone was whisked into the room, treated for a bacterial infection and sent home.

The next spring, Senator Chuck Schumer accompanied his wife, who had a fever and was short of breath, to the emergency room. As sicker patients were treated in the hallway, the couple were ushered into Room 20, where they received expedited Covid-19 tests, according to workers who witnessed the scene. The tests came back negative.

NYU Langone denies putting V.I.P.s first, but 33 medical workers told The New York Times that they had seen such patients receive preferential treatment in Room 20, one of the largest private spaces in the department. One doctor was surprised to find an orthopedic specialist in the room awaiting a senior hospital executive’s mother with hip pain. Another described an older hospital trustee who was taken to Room 20 when he was short of breath after exercising.

The privileged treatment is part of a broader pattern, a Times investigation found. For years, NYU’s emergency room in Manhattan has secretly given priority to donors, trustees, politicians, celebrities, and their friends and family, according to 45 medical workers, internal hospital records and other confidential documents reviewed by The Times.

On hospital computers, electronic medical charts sometimes specify whether patients have donated to the hospital or how they are connected to executives, according to screenshots taken by frustrated doctors in recent years and shared with The Times.

“Major trustee, please prioritize,” said one from July 2020.

Dozens of doctors said they felt pressure to put V.I.P.s first. Many witnessed such patients jumping ahead of sicker people for CT scans and M.R.I.s. Some said medical specialists, often in short supply, were diverted from other cases to attend to mild complaints from high-priority patients.

Many hospitals offer exclusive concierge services to the rich. But emergency rooms are built around the premise of medical triage: that the sickest patients, regardless of their ability to pay, are treated first. Everyone else has to wait.

At NYU Langone, one of the country’s pre-eminent medical institutions, some doctors said that process had been upended.

“As emergency department doctors, we have two important skills: triage and resuscitation,” said Dr. Kimbia Arno, who worked in the emergency room in 2020 and 2021. “This system is in direct defiance of what we do and what we were trained to do.”

“The stress on providers is harmful,” said Dr. Anand Swaminathan, a physician in the emergency room from 2009 to 2018. “It’s the fact that I am getting multiple calls, from multiple people, asking me to drop everything to treat a V.I.P.”

Eleven doctors told The Times that they had resigned from the emergency department in part because they objected to favoring V.I.P.s.

Some residents — doctors in their first years of practice — complained to the national organization that accredits medical training programs. The frustrations included NYU’s “special treatment” of trustees, donors and their families, according to documents reviewed by The Times. The group’s subsequent investigation confirmed that some doctors “felt pressured to see V.I.P. patients first” and that they “experience a sense of fear and intimidation and retaliation for not expediting V.I.P. patient care.”

The Internal Revenue Service requires nonprofit hospitals like NYU, which avoids $250 million a year in taxes, to benefit their communities. A primary way to meet the requirement is to run an emergency room that is open to everyone.

But at NYU, poor people sometimes struggle to be seen. For example, ambulance workers said nurses in the emergency room routinely discouraged them from dropping off homeless or intoxicated patients. Instead, they were often shuttled to nearby Bellevue, a strained public hospital that primarily treats the poor.

A Times series this year has found that many nonprofit hospitals have strayed from their charitable roots to maximize profits. Giant hospital systems illegally sent exorbitant bills to Medicaid patients. They used hospitals in poor neighborhoods to qualify for steep drug discounts, funneling the proceeds into wealthier neighborhoods. Others cut staff to dangerously low levels.

NYU’s chief of hospital operations, Dr. Fritz François, denied that the hospital favored donors, trustees and other prominent patients. He said that patients received treatment based on how sick they were, regardless of their wealth or status, and that the emergency room treated many low-income and homeless patients.

“We do not have a V.I.P. program,” Dr. François wrote in a letter to The Times. “We do not have V.I.P. patients. We do not have V.I.P. floors. We do not have V.I.P. rooms. We do not have V.I.P. clinical teams. We do not offer V.I.P. care.”

Lisa Greiner, a spokeswoman for NYU Langone, confirmed that Mr. Langone had been treated in Room 20, which she said was “absolutely appropriate” based on his symptoms. She said the room served a variety of purposes, including privacy. She said no patient, including Mr. Langone, “has ever been treated in an isolated room at the expense of any other patient’s care.”

Mr. Langone said, “As a matter of personal integrity I have never asked for any special treatment at the hospital, and they have never offered.”

Angelo Roefaro, a spokesman for Mr. Schumer, said the protocol for the senator’s security detail was “to have the senator stay, whenever possible, in a secure location.”

Andrew C. Phillips, a lawyer for NYU, said some of the doctors who had spoken to The Times were motivated to disparage the hospital. Dr. Arno, for example, had been in a fellowship program and was passed over for a permanent job, he said. Mr. Phillips also said Dr. Swaminathan had never voiced concerns to hospital leaders about V.I.P.s.

Dr. François acknowledged that NYU’s electronic medical records sometimes included notations describing patients as “friends and family.” But he said these labels were available for all hospital employees — even the cousins of security guards and housekeepers — and enabled employees to pay courtesy visits to such patients.

“Our friends and family do not receive different or better medical care,” Dr. François wrote. He added, “Our friends and family don’t skip the triage process, don’t jump any lines, don’t get placed in any special rooms or floors and don’t get fed any differently.”

Dozens of doctors and other emergency room staff said that, when it came to many V.I.P.s, that was simply not true.

An E.R.’s Transformation

In 2007, the New York University Medical Center was in grave financial trouble.

Were it not for royalties from an arthritis drug developed by one of its researchers, the hospital would have lost $150 million that year. The patent’s expiration was looming.

A lifeline came from Mr. Langone, the founder of Home Depot and chairman of the hospital’s board of trustees. He and his wife donated $100 million in 2008, matching a contribution they had made eight years earlier. The medical center was renamed NYU Langone.

Mr. Langone became known not just for his own philanthropy — he donated another $100 million in 2019 — but also his ability to persuade other wealthy New Yorkers to donate. Over the ensuing years, he helped the hospital raise $3 billion.

In 2012, the run-down emergency room, on the East River in Midtown Manhattan, was destroyed by Hurricane Sandy. It reopened two years later with more space and a new name, the Ronald O. Perelman Center for Emergency Services, named for the billionaire who financed its construction.

The emergency department’s longtime chair, an outspoken champion of serving the needy, stepped down in 2015. Around then, several doctors said, they began receiving requests from administrators to give priority to V.I.P.s.

“Suddenly, we started getting these phone calls that X person is coming in, they are X relation to board member, and we were given the strong sense that you had to push them to the front of the line,” said Dr. Swaminathan, who worked in the emergency room at the time.

NYU was not the only prestigious nonprofit hospital system finding ways to cater to donors and other wealthy patients.

In San Francisco, the UCSF Medical Center rewarded donors with faster access to top cardiologists. Stanford Medical Center gave wealthy patients red blankets to distinguish them from everyone else. (Spokeswomen for those medical centers said they no longer provided such perks.)

Today, top New York hospitals like Mount Sinai and NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell offer luxury accommodations and personal concierge services to patients who can afford them.

And emergency room workers at several elite academic medical centers said in interviews that, as at NYU, administrators sometimes requested expedited treatment for well-connected patients.

“The hospitals are acting as businesses,” said Dr. Renee Hsia, a professor at the University of California, San Francisco, who researches emergency room care. “They can often garner much more revenue from these patients that are huge donors.”

The V.I.P. experience in NYU’s Manhattan emergency room starts before the patient arrives.

Trustees can use a dedicated phone number — the Trustee Access Line — to alert the hospital they are coming. Administrators then call, text and send messages notifying doctors that a high-priority patient is en route, according to 30 doctors. Doctors said that even when those messages did not explicitly seek priority treatment, that was how they were interpreted.

“Just a heads up that a VIP/trustee is coming to the ED per notification from the Dean’s office and to keep an eye out for her,” one doctor wrote in an electronic chat in August 2021, referring to the emergency department. The Times reviewed a screenshot of the exchange.

Ms. Greiner, the NYU spokeswoman, said the trustee line “does not entitle any member to better or prioritized care.” She said that the V.I.P. reference in the 2021 message was “colloquial and does not correspond with any special protocol at our hospital,” and that the sender did not “ask for or expect special care, line cutting or anything of the sort.”

Doctors said they were sometimes required to carry a hospital-issued iPhone that, among other things, was logged into an email chain that alerted them to incoming V.I.P.s.

“It didn’t matter how busy it was,” said Dr. Uché Blackstock, who worked in the emergency room from 2010 to 2019. “A V.I.P. was coming, and we had to drop everything.” She left NYU partly because of frustration with the preferential treatment, she said.

Ms. Greiner said that Dr. Blackstock had never complained to the hospital about improper prioritization of patients and that Dr. Blackstock had herself alerted colleagues on a few occasions when her family or friends were in the emergency room. In response, Dr. Blackstock said there was a distinction between what she had done and what she and others perceived as institutional pressure to swiftly treat V.I.P.s.

Some patients’ electronic medical charts included reminders about their V.I.P. status, according to screenshots captured by emergency room doctors and shared with The Times.

Image Credit...The New York Times Image Credit... “NYUMC BOARD OF TRUSTEE AND IMMEDIATE FAMILY,” read one note.

Another: “She is a donor and a prospect for a planned gift.”

A third: “Escort Needed” and “Daughter of Trustee.” (Some V.I.P.s were assigned employees to stand by to transport them around the hospital, according to 13 medical workers. Ms. Greiner denied that.)

Image Credit...The New York Times Two members of NYU Langone’s board of trustees said in interviews that they had received swift, excellent care at the emergency room. They believed everyone got such treatment.

“I didn’t have to wait around for long hours for someone to come talk to me as happens in other emergency rooms,” said Bernard Schwartz, who said he had donated more than $30 million to NYU Langone. “I think that’s for all patients.”

Mr. Schwartz said he did not think his medical record identified him as a trustee. But he presumed that doctors knew who he was.

“I would be upset if that were not true,” he said.

Delayed Resuscitations NYU’s emergency room often has more than 100 patients at once but only 40 curtained beds, leaving many patients to be treated in the hallways.

None of the doctors The Times interviewed had ever seen that happen with a V.I.P.

One Thursday night in April 2018, workers in the emergency room got an alert that Mr. Langone would be arriving in about 20 minutes. They had to figure out where to put other patients to ensure that he could have a private room, according to two medical workers with direct knowledge of what happened. When he arrived with a two-centimeter cut on his thumb, doctors quickly stitched him up.

Ms. Greiner said no other patients were awaiting care during Mr. Langone’s visit. The two workers told The Times that the emergency room had been as busy as usual.

Image Dr. Michelle Romeo, who worked in the emergency room until 2021, recalled a famous actor’s jumping to the front of the line for a CT scan.Credit...Ashley Gilbertson for The New York Times Emergency room workers said these arrangements for V.I.P.s sometimes delayed critical care for sicker patients.

In late 2019, doctors were racing to rescue a patient in cardiac arrest. One pushed the gurney toward one of the private rooms meant for life-or-death emergencies. Another sat atop the unconscious patient, performing chest compressions. When they arrived at the room, they could not enter — a V.I.P. occupied it. The patient survived, but two workers who witnessed the episode said the delay could have been deadly.

Ms. Greiner said, “Without the patient’s information, we cannot investigate this claim other than to say that at NYU Langone, there is one standard of care for all patients.”

The Times identified many similar examples.

For example, a relative of someone on the hospital’s leadership team went into the emergency room with chest pain and was promptly taken to a private room, even as a man experiencing a life-threatening emergency — a blockage of blood to one of his limbs — was put in the hallway, according to the accreditation group’s investigation.

Another time, at the instruction of a hospital administrator, a V.I.P. patient with asymptomatic Covid was seen by pulmonology and infectious-disease specialists who had to be pulled away from sicker patients, according to two medical workers with direct knowledge of the case.

Ms. Greiner said that The Times had not provided enough information for her to be able to respond definitively, but that the asymptomatic patient might have had an underlying illness.

Dr. Michelle Romeo, who was a resident in the emergency room from 2017 until 2021, recalled when a famous actor with a headache and low-grade fever jumped to the front of the line for a CT scan, cutting off a nursing home resident who had possible sepsis and had been waiting for three hours.

The actor requested a spinal tap, which Dr. Romeo believed was unnecessary. A supervisor instructed her to do it anyway, she said.

Both tests showed nothing wrong with the patient.

Mr. Phillips, the lawyer for NYU, said Dr. Romeo had an incentive to criticize the hospital because she had not been offered a full-time position after her residency. Dr. Romeo said she believed she had not been offered the job because she had been outspoken about issues including the treatment of V.I.P.s.

A Public Shaming Over the years, doctors in NYU’s emergency room came to believe there could be career-threatening consequences if well-connected patients were dissatisfied with their treatment.

In October 2019, Dr. Joe Bennett was at the end of what’s known as a shift-change huddle, updating his colleagues on the patients he was handing off, when a frustrated V.I.P. approached him. The V.I.P. demanded that a family member immediately receive a CT scan, according to a doctor who witnessed the encounter and two others who were briefed on the matter.

Dr. Bennett explained that a sicker patient was the priority but that the family member would come next.

Soon after, Dr. Bennett was put on probation for what NYU said was a lack of professionalism, according to the three doctors. For months, the hospital required him to attend weekly meetings and write essays reflecting on how to provide professional treatment.

Image Doctors viewed the ouster of Dr. Kristin Carmody as punishment for her not catering to a V.I.P.Credit...Ashley Gilbertson for The New York Times About a year later, in December 2020, Dr. Kristin Carmody, who oversaw the education of medical residents in the emergency department, was forced to resign after a patient complained about having not received the level of attention or treatment that she expected. Dr. Carmody later said in a wrongful-termination lawsuit that the patient had been designated as a V.I.P.

Ms. Greiner said that the patient’s medical record had not included a friends-and-family label and that Dr. Carmody had been pushed out because she falsely noted on a medical record that she had personally examined the patient. (Dr. Carmody denies that.)

But inside the emergency department, her ouster was widely regarded as punishment for not sufficiently catering to a V.I.P. patient.

At a heated staff meeting that month, a senior doctor said Dr. Carmody’s forced departure appeared to be the result of a complaint from “a V.I.P. person that was connected to higher-ups,” according to a recording of the meeting. The doctor added, “The clear message is anybody can be taken down.”

Around that time, top NYU officials commissioned an internal review of the culture of the emergency department, whose employees were burned out from the pandemic and unhappy with their pay.

The investigation documented concerns with V.I.P. care, according to a presentation that Dr. Robert Femia, the chairman of the emergency department, delivered to doctors.

Many doctors and nurses “dislike the current ‘V.I.P.’ process because they perceive it as disrupting ordinary work flows” in which staff triage patients based on their medical needs, one slide said. “They do not recognize that the true issue is that every patient is a ‘V.I.P.’ patient.”

‘An NYU Dump’ In the summer of 2021, a few months after Dr. Femia’s presentation, an ambulance dropped off a disheveled homeless patient at NYU’s emergency room. He had pain in both legs and was having trouble walking.

A worker checked the man’s vital signs. He was offered Tylenol and discharged, according to an email that a senior nurse later sent to more than 200 colleagues detailing what had happened.

About an hour later, the man was back. This time, he was seen in the waiting room by a social worker, who noted that it was hard for the man to lift his legs from his wheelchair. No one undressed the patient to examine his legs. He was discharged again.

It was not until later that day that the hospital admitted him. The man was diagnosed with acute kidney failure and rhabdomyolysis, a potentially fatal muscular condition.

Ms. Greiner said the case had been handled appropriately. But medical staff noted that NYU included it in an internal review process in which doctors try to learn from mistakes.

Doctors and nurses described a pattern in which homeless patients — surefire money losers for hospitals — sometimes received cursory care, even as privately insured patients with similar symptoms were admitted for urgent treatment.

For poor or homeless patients, “there is pressure to see them in the hallway or in the waiting room,” said Dr. Jeremy Branzetti, who ran NYU’s emergency-medicine residency program until last year. “I have never seen a V.I.P. patient in the hallway.” Mr. Phillips, the lawyer for NYU, said Dr. Branzetti had received a poor performance review and his contract was not renewed.

Some homeless people struggle to get into NYU’s emergency room in the first place.

Anthony Almojera, the vice president of a union that represents emergency services officers, said nurses at NYU reprimanded ambulance crews when they tried to drop off patients who appeared homeless or intoxicated.

“I had instances where the nurse’s first question wasn’t ‘What is wrong with the patient?’ but ‘How come this patient is being brought here?’” Mr. Almojera said.

Another ambulance worker, who requested anonymity because he still works with NYU, said that when he tried to drop off a drunk patient in October, a nurse demanded to know his badge number.

The pressure from nurses works: Paramedics who work on public ambulances said that instead of taking drunk or homeless patients to NYU, they routinely dropped them off at Bellevue, which is staffed in part by NYU residents.

NYU’s own fleet of ambulances, which handle some 911 calls, also take their unwanted patients to Bellevue, according to four nurses there.

“There isn’t a day that goes by that we don’t get an NYU dump,” said Kim Behrens, who has spent more than a decade as a nurse at Bellevue.

“We treat undomiciled persons every day and give every effort to do so with dignity, respect and compassion,” Ms. Greiner said. She also pointed to data showing that NYU treats thousands of Medicaid-eligible patients.

Accreditation in Jeopardy

By 2021, doctors had lost patience with the administration’s elevation of V.I.P.s, which they saw as unethical and dangerous to other patients. Some quit. Others complained to hospital administrators.

Then the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, which oversees medical training programs nationwide, received an anonymous complaint. One of the four allegations was that the V.I.P. system “teaches residents patient bias,” according to a letter the council sent to NYU in November 2021.

The accreditation council interviewed more than 50 doctors, who confirmed that V.I.P.s were regularly given priority. Citing Dr. Carmody’s ouster, they described being afraid of professional consequences if they did not give preferential treatment to well-connected patients.

The council said that climate of fear violated the group’s educational standards for medical residents. And the organization said it was unclear if NYU had taken steps to ensure that the V.I.P. process would not harm patients.

In August, the council put NYU’s emergency department on probation, jeopardizing the accreditation of its residency program. It was a rare move: Last year, of 12,740 residency programs, just 25 were placed on probation.

NYU has two years to address the council’s concerns. Losing the accreditation could cost the hospital millions of dollars a year in federal funds and doom the residency program, which the hospital relies on to keep its emergency room running.

Ms. Greiner accused the accreditation council of recycling “false” allegations about V.I.P. patients getting special treatment. The council said it stood by its findings.

Susan C. Beachy and Kitty Bennett contributed research.

Skels

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NYU is not the only hospital that prioritizes VIPs. Columbia Presbyterian and Memorial Sloan Kettering have entire VIP wings. I suspect all the major hospitals do. Call it fund raising.

>A lifeline came from Mr. Langone, the founder of Home Depot and chairman of the hospital’s board of trustees. He and his wife donated $100 million in 2008, matching a contribution they had made eight years earlier. The medical center was renamed NYU Langone.

>Mr. Langone became known not just for his own philanthropy — he donated another $100 million in 2019 — but also his ability to persuade other wealthy New Yorkers to donate. Over the ensuing years, he helped the hospital raise $3 billion.

Man gives $300 million of his own money and helped raise $3 billion but hey, no preferential treatment.

This article sounds very much like a member of the Sulzberger family which owns the Times did not get the right flavor of Jello in the hospital so this hatchet job was ordered.

I know for sure that at Columbia Presbyterian, the "VIP" floor, called the McKeen Pavillion, comes with substantial extra charges which anyone who has the money can pay. Whether or not people like Bill Clinton actually paid those charges, I don't know.

"Business favors customers that help keep the lights on."

Sounds right to me.

Maybe the business model is garbage then, considering it’s a hospital.

If you're ever visiting anyone at Columbia Pres, anywhere in the hospital, there's a very nice not expensive dining room near the McKeen Pavilion (thank you for the name) with great views of the Hudson and the GWB.

But the article is talking about prioritizing VIPs over sicker people in the ER. Which no hospital openly does.

> Man gives $300 million of his own money and helped raise $3 billion but hey, no preferential treatment. > >

He also led the effort to make NYU medical school free

How about we nationalize 95% of ALL hospitals? And make medical care free, like literally every other civilized nation in the world.

i mean yea, but doesn't seem like this has much displacement cost.

The hospital spokesperson, Ms. Greiner, embodies the worst of corporate doublespeak. I can't stand people like her.

I'm from one of those countries.

The downsides would stun the US middle class.

"I'd like to see a PCP" - cool that'll be two weeks.

"The PCP has referred me to see a specialist, he's worried about this strange tumor" - that'll be 10 weeks, at 7am in the morning, on the other side of town. If you cancel it'll be another 10 weeks.

"I'd like to see a dentist" - Sorry, no.

I thought this was a given? If I give tens of millions to a hospital I want priority treatment.

Presume the donations over the years have had a major net benefit to others.

Object to politicians skipping the line though.

Any hospital/medical office or business will favor known entities. This is not news. Would I be annoyed if my grandma got skipped in line for her Ct scan, sure, but I wouldn’t think the entire medical system needs to be revamped because of it as some suggested above. Stupid article. Not news.

You must not be familiar with American healthcare.

My PCP is booking in February, and I would be overjoyed with a specialist who could see me as soon as 10 weeks out.

I have a really hard time being upset that the man who gave $100 million to a hospitable, raised another $3 billion, and helped make a medical school at one of the country’s most famous universities (NYU) free is able to get a room instead of sitting in the hallway when he shows up to the hospital.

And also gee, really? They put a United States senator in a room instead of treating him in a hallway in an emergency room that could present a security threat with (according to their own admission) mentally ill and intoxicated persons walking around? Shocking.

I live in NYC. Have done for years. Can see a PCP this afternoon if I want, could probably see a top 10 specialist within a week. Pretty standard work-based insurance.

Try Zocdoc. You shouldn't be waiting til Feb in NYC man.

That's how you end up with certain hospitals being for black and brown Medicaid patients and certain hospitals being for mostly white finance bros. Which is pretty much what we have in NYC and much of the rest of the country.

The most acute patient who needs the room should get the room. Title/ personal income/type of insurance should have nothing to do with clinical decisions.

Where can I get a two week appointment with a PCP!?!? I routinely wait a month or more. I'm on 4 months trying to get an endocrinologist who takes my insurance in the health system I use.

This would be a huge improvement

Also most of those people got their money through ye old “privatize the profits socialize the costs” method of business. So i guess it’s consistent

What insurance do you have?

An Empire Blue Cross HRA. And I use the Mt Sinai health system, I have almost no out of pocket costs there.

Just because you want it doesn’t make it suddenly ethical to give you that.

All of these conversations are ones that middle class Americans already have.

Ran it through Zocdoc.

Dr. Andrew H. Maran, MD

Dec 27, 9 appts available.

​

For Primary Care there are hundreds available today alone.

These things are not the same.

This is nothing new, every hospital that has a board of trustees and donors do the same thing. Regardless every patients gets triaged, and if they’re truly critical they’ll get seen just as quick. Maybe not in a “special room” but that’s not really important when you’re dying.

not in my provider directory, not part of Sinai doctors, and not anywhere near me.

but yeah sure

Everyone gets triaged and everything is documented electronically. If someone was on deaths door and it was documented as such and the hospital got sued/audited it would be a major issue.

Yea, I think it’s reasonable that he can cut the line of the skell who’s there because they have toe pain for 3 months.

You should run for office!

Am I being too cynical for assuming this happens everywhere?

Like, even Scrubs and ER back in the 90s/00s had multiple episodes about it.

Well one of their accreditations is on probation according to the article, so someone did some sort of audit and found issues. But sure whatever man

I second Zocdoc. I’ve gotten appts with specialists the next day.

17% of NYU Langone's patients are on Medicaid. 81% of Bellevue's patients are on Medicaid. They are literally right next door to each other. They are very much the same thing.

You’re not, and it does happen everywhere. Same for employees of the hospital. If you work there and you’re waiting for a cat scan and you know the tech you just call them and tell them you’re a patient and you’ll be next AFTER someone who is actively dying/having a stroke. This really isn’t news.

Bellvue is the only mental health hospital in the city, and receives patients from many situations.

It is also what is called a “safety net” hospital, and is intended by the city to be a hospital that takes in people regardless of ability to pay or insurance status.

Among other things, NYU is a research hospital, working to advance new medical practices.

You aren’t totally without a point but this is a bad example.

Covered by your insurance, in your city, and available next week.

I'm sorry to say, but if that isn't good enough for you - you'd fuckin hate the NHS.

Hospital ERs aren’t allowed to turn patients away for any reason, including insurance type and ability to pay.

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LOLOLOLOLOL does everyone get lolipops and a puppy at discharge too?

> If you work there and you’re waiting for a cat scan and you know the tech you just call them and tell them you’re a patient and you’ll be next before someone who is actively dying/having a stroke.

Over someone who is actively dying or having a stroke? Is this a fact? Is this something you’ve seen happen? If so, which hospital? I’m genuinely curious and concerned.

Well color me surprised!

Meant to put AFTER.

It’s literally law, you cannot turned away from an ER for any reason. You should look into EMTALA. You’ve also clearly never worked in healthcare.

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> I live in NYC. Have done for years. Can see a PCP this afternoon if I want, could probably see a top 10 specialist within a week.

[x] doubt.

I just booked a pediatric ENT appointment and they were scheduled through mid-February.

Literally NOT in my provider directory. So NOT covered by my insurance. And not even remotely affiliated with the health system I use. ZocDoc is just ads. Its not an actual provider directory.
Specialist wait times have been skyrocketing in urban areas in the last two to three years. Dermatology is up to over a month on average. OB is as well. Cardiology is just about a month. Wait times in some specialties are higher than in Canada now. Its a real problem.

NYU Langone is tax exempt and pays no federal, state, or local taxes, which saves them $250 million a year. If they're actually a business, then let's tax them accordingly.

Literally all hospitals have VIP floors

>Dermatology is up to over a month on average. OB is as well. Cardiology is just about a month.

Yep but you're looking at 2/3 months for those in the UK.

Checked Zocdoc and earliest available is Jan 13.

Bit longer at three weeks, but still a fraction of how long you'd wait in UK.

Meanwhile availability for cardiologists, gastroenterologists, etc all abundant. I could go today, even.

I think the entire issue at nyc is worthy of scrutiny and a medial ethics debate. It is indeed the very definition of a slippery slope to prioritize own persons health needs over another. It feels morally wrong to me, but practically speaking, how many more people have been saved and will be saved in that ER by Langone and other donors being taken care of? And my opinion of that practicality, I’m not personally offended, would definitely change of it was me or my mom hemorrhaging in the hallway while a VIP got a room for a 2 centimeter cut.

Not at nyu but I went to dropoff and wait for my friend to get surgery. Even though it was just sitting around for the whole day, I made sure to dress semi nicely, wear jewelry and makeup and look like someone that can afford a good lawyer even though I was just sitting in the waiting room. I also don’t wear pajamas to the airport in case I need a gate agent to make a change to my ticket. It’s the way of the world, but it shouldn’t be.

This is America. Where rich people with the flu take priority over someone dying in front of a doctor. No surprising here.

Yea, that doesn’t happen. You’ve clearly never worked in an ER.

The article talks about that but doesn't provide any evidence, despite speaking with 50+ doctors. It's trying to shock you by saying Ken Langone wasn't treated in the hallway. Wow. If other patients weren't treated because Ken Langone was there, you can be pretty sure the "journalists" would have included that info.

So what you are saying is...some hospitals are for poor people and some hospitals are for people with money and good insurance.

And Bellevue isn't a mental health hospital. Its an acute care general hospital with psych beds, same as any other hospital in the city.

Go to the NYS Sparcs data and see how many EMTALA discharges there are in total, particularly outside of L&D. A couple dozen maybe? EMTALA requres stabilization not treatment. If you are on Medicaid and/or uninsured (or of a demographic where you are more likely to me on Medicaid/or uninsured) NYU just has to determine you are stable enough to be wheeled down to the next set of double ED doors and they bring you right into Bellevue and say "this nurse will help you."

Caught a Social worker at Cornell openly speaking about an undocumented immigrant that was discharged unable to walk or stand with a PICC line who came back 5 hours later because he was unable to take care of himself.

She said "I don't understand why we need to give this man a medical bed. We should send him to a city hospital".

I can assure you every word out of these administrator's mouths is a lie.

I took my kid to Maimonides ER for a possible broke bone and waited for a long time. After a while a kid comes in and he was yelling a lot and also for a possible broken bone. Because the the screaming that kid got his X-ray right and the doctor saw him. The kid had no broken bone and was fine, he kept screaming that they did another X-ray and the doctor saw him again. My kid got a X-ray too but we haven’t seen the doctor. After our X-ray the screaming kid got two X-rays and saw the doctor twice while we were waiting. I had to complained to get the doctors to look at my kid’s X-ray. The PA response was how did I know all this happened? I said I could hear the conversation through the cloth curtains. I could understand why the saw the other kid first because of the screaming but why the second time when they knew nothing was wrong?

I have friends who work in hospitals who gotten their family and friends seen first.

I wouldn't take a dog to the Maimonides ER and that's because I like dogs.

Add Lenox Hill to the list

Where do people think a ton of money comes from to maintain the fiscal stability of the hospital--any guesses? Donors. If someone has been mistreated or not treated because of lack of celebrity status, they can sue. This is much ado about nothing.

And in this case its bogus.

Was the man the hospital is literally named after and a senator with security concerns truly the most egregious examples they could find? I worked in outpatient healthcare for several years, yes VIPs(celebrities, major donors, and politicians) were put in rooms quickly and depending on security risks brought in through a private entrance. This isn’t unusual but at the end of the day they weren’t receiving different medical treatment just being treated with kid gloves. I would be shocked if NYU didn’t operate this way. It’s unfortunate, but sometimes those are the people who make donations that allow you to keep doors open, and to expand care to even more patients.

That said it is problematic in the ER if a VIP with a less urgent concern is prioritized over another patient in the ER solely due to their VIP status. Putting them in a private room to wait and receive treatment isn’t problematic, prioritizing them over other patients is though. I’m not sure that this article really proves how much that it happening.

They’ve also received millions in donations from Langone that allowed them to progress research and build new facilities. Treating the guy did all this is a bad thing?

For that one person he displaced in his emergency, he’s probably saved hundreds of others with his donation

Fckn nailed it. The millions and and billions he’s donated / solicited has saved an unquantifiable of lives. People need to get over their holier than thou attitude

If someone donated the funds to buy the CT machine that thousands are using every month, I wouldn't mind having that person skip the line if they needed a CT scan.

Why is that bad though?? Why not allow hospitals to specialize.

Ah yes , Cuba…

The business model of a non-profit hospital.

Big point for people who don’t work in medicine. This was specifically a problem for ER visits not genera hospitalization. VIP wings are nothing new but expedited care in the ED is egregious

Except that doesn’t happen.

Oh no, anyway...

Where in this article does it say that someone died because a VIP was in a private room?

Beyoncé’s security hassling other families while she was at Lenox Hill was infuriating:

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/10/nyregion/after-birth-by-beyonce-patients-protest-celebrity-security-at-lenox-hill-hospital.html

How many lives do you think the $300 million he donated saved? How many underprivileged people were able to go to NYU medical school tuition free Due to his donations? It’s okay if he gets a private room and skips a couple of equal acuity cases in the ct scan line.

I think this is actually a great sign on how our accessible hospitals are pretty great. I would imagine a billionaire has access to all sorts of publicly known (like Sollis) and stuff the public doesn’t know about, private ER services. And yet they choose to share the hospital with the rest of the city. That’s a great sign

It’s a hospital, not purgatory. You shouldn’t get priority based off how much of a perceived great person you are or what debt the non-profit org feels they owe you.

Don’t forget the residents and taxpayers subsidizing these hospitals. If they want to prioritize “VIPs” over the rest of us New Yorkers who pay for their fiscal stability, then they should get their hands out of our pockets.

Realistically, nothings going to change. Anyone who’s worked in a hospital knows about “board members” and “trustees”.

I mean, not defending any social status-based prioritization of healthcare services, but prioritizing a “major trustee” of the university is not just “favoring the rich”. A Board of Trustees is the top governing structure of a university. People who serve on it have made a major, sustained commitment of money, time, and effort to advancing the school’s interests and stature. This isn’t just a case of “this guy is rich let’s give them better healthcare”. This is more along the lines of “look sharp the boss is here”.

> Realistically, nothings going to change.

For some reason you mistake this with the practice being ethical. That is not the case. Learn the difference.

The article directly cites a number of doctors and at the end of it, cites that the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education has found that NYU Langone has a VIP system that "teaches resident patient bias".

Seems like pretty solid evidence that NYU Langone prioritizes donors and trustees.

With that said, this is the way that systems work almost everywhere - if you know someone or are "important" in some way, you get treated better. This is not something likely to change.

What I find distasteful is the implication that those who protest this system get retaliated against/fired. That seems like a step way too far.

A “pro-tip” for anyone concerned with preferential treatment in the ER. Take an ambulance, regardless of your symptoms, the priory is to get the EMS crew back on the street and you’ll be given a spot quicker than someone in the waiting room who has the same symptoms as you.

Yes waste everyone's time and drive up the cost of medical care for everyone because you are entitled and can't wait. Remember the ER is not first come first serve its based on how sick you are. If you are waiting a long time you should thank God you are not as sick as the people that need to be seen before you.

Yeah. So we should allow rich people to buy fast passes to human rights?

Yes that’s exactly what I said, not that one of the most senior politicians in the US and a man who is responsible for billions in donations to a hospital should be able to get a private room. Got me!

FYI - this floor no longer exists post-covid

You gotta love the audacity of having doctors on record saying something happened, 11 more resigning in protest of it, and on-record complaints to an accreditation authority about it, and still denying it ever happens.

People already treat ambulances like taxis, too late. Ask anyone that works in an ER or any EMS worker.

My point is it’s not exclusively “rich” people that get perceived special treatment.

There are multiple examples of what you are describing in the article. I would recommend reading it all the way through before participating in the discussion, as a general practice.

Right, this is the equivalent of corporate gaslighting. All these highly respected doctors and medical professionals all had some hidden agenda and the hospital is in no way even a tiny bit responsible and def couldn't benefit from some kind of review of their current processes 🙄

The Reddit “holier than thou” crowd is displaced from reality.

lololol this story is such a outrage reach

From the article:

>In late 2019, doctors were racing to rescue a patient in cardiac arrest. One pushed the gurney toward one of the private rooms meant for life-or-death emergencies. Another sat atop the unconscious patient, performing chest compressions. When they arrived at the room, they could not enter — a V.I.P. occupied it. The patient survived, but two workers who witnessed the episode said the delay could have been deadly.

crazy how many of you are making the jump from "i'm not surprised by this" to "this is a completely appropriate practice for a nonprofit hospital subsidized by my tax dollars." also diverting patients to a public hospital means that when they can't pay for their care, the city picks up the cost instead.

appreciate you fighting the good fight here. crazy how some people will literally sit down and write out paragraphs about why a segregated healthcare system is fine and dandy

it'll only come back to bite them in the ass. the first step to fixing a problem is acknowledging that it exists, which NYU obviously isn't doing here. like it said in the article, they're on probation now and have 2 years to fix this problem or they'll lose their accreditation. the more they deny the problem exists, the less able they are to take significant measures against it, and the more likely it is they'll end up losing their accreditation.

Worked for NYU ED in Brooklyn through the pandemic, this is all true. We had a lot less of this shit in Brooklyn but I worked with a lot of these attendings and residents. It's well known those in leadership rule through fear and intimidation and any descent will get you fired. Director of the ED Femia mentioned in the article is disliked and fired multiple attendings who spoke up for their colleagues or in favor of this culture. Good to see something is happening and NYU will get it's reckoning.

All of NYU is like this, from the undergraduate school through the hospitals, law school, whatever. Image and riding on the coattails of celebrities is the goal.

Seemingly no one responding has read the full article. Yea, the guy who the hospital is named after getting quick treatment isn't an egregious example of what the article is trying to highlight. Is it ethical? Probably not. But that's the realities of medicine sometimes

The real issues here are:

the administrative retaliation against staff who voiced their concerns

Making it a practice of not admitting patients due to being uninsured

People with nonurgent medical needs cutting the line for CT scans

NYU gets 250m a year in tax breaks in exchange for 'serving the community'.

That’s way better than having to prepare a bribe to the doctor and buying medicines in the black market.

You might have an inconvenient public health care system, but it could be a lot worse..

Yes, what’s worse, this VIP treatment or having all of those donations go instead to private-access only hospitals

I hate to say it but I don't think this is an NYU-specific problem... I work in an ED in NYC and not too long ago, the vice chair called to give me the heads up that our hospital CEO's nephew was being brought in. I essentially asked what I was supposed to do with that information and the conversation went like this:

​

Vice Chair: "I want you to treat him like ...."

Me: *interrupting before they finish, "...like any other patient"

(I thought they were going to make the point that everybody is equal and we treat everybody the best we can)

Vice Chair: "No. I want you to treat them like CEO's nephew!"

​

I also trained at a different hospital in NYC and they too would "reserve" inpatient beds for VIPs before they even arrived at the hospital. We were told not to give those beds away to another patient, including patients who had clearly been there longer, waiting for an inpatient bed to open up.

Still listed in many places on the hospital website, e.g. https://www.nyp.org/sites/default/files/acquiadam/2020-08/mckeen-amenities-brochure.pdf

No, what I’m saying is that Bellevue receives almost all of its funding from the NY State gov, and NYU receives most of its funding from outside sources.

Bellevue is also significantly larger in terms of capacity, and more has a larger ER and in patient facility.

Can’t say I’m surprised, call it a work benefit 🤷‍♂️

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Those are purely technical issues lmao. You are talking about medical accreditation like you know anything about it

Seems reasonable. These people clog up hospital beds for no reason other than to receive a single dose of ceftriaxone each day.

I mean that didn’t happen here either.

Comparing bellevues mission to NYU LMAO

You are so fucking incorrect it’s funny. Hospitals are mandated to admit if you meet admission criteria. They are mandated to find safe discharges. They are mandated to do so regardless of your pay.

We have patients that sit in beds for YEARS and pay NOTHING because they cannot afford a SNF bed.

Why talk about a profession you know nothing about

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I never said our broken healthcare system was fine and dandy- just that the fact that if some wealthy individuals have given their money to make some facilities better it isn’t the fault of those individuals and their contributions that the rest of the system is broken.

Is that what happened? I must have missed that in the article

This is how we wind up with Trauma Team Platinum

Add homeless mentally ill clientele using the hospital as a short stay hotel for a nice bed a free food and query how much of the 81% comes from that. Trying to frame it differently is disingenuous.

>they could not enter — a V.I.P. occupied it

Could they enter other (non-VIP) occupied rooms?

If it doesn't happen everywhere, then you would expect to sometimes hear about easily-recognized celebrities sitting in waiting rooms alongside everyone else, especially now that everyone has a smartphone in their pocket. That does not seem to be the case.

I don't know, man, but two medical workers said "the delay could have been deadly," which is enough evidence for me that this is a fucked up practice. Why's everyone in the comments desperate to defend this multibillion-dollar medical institution?

“Doesn’t provide any evidence”

come on lisa, the times gave your claims plenty of coverage already.

>Why's everyone in the comments desperate to defend this multibillion-dollar medical institution?

It just seems like a hit-piece. This is a good problem to tackle, but is it NYU-specific? Why not look at nearby comparable institutions like Weill Cornell/Columbia and Mount Sinai as well?

Well due to hipaa laws they probably couldn’t list any other patients unless it was publicly known already that they were in the hospital.

Thanks for your enlightening explanation!

What's with all the comments saying "no, NYU doesn't do that...trust me"?

Well I'm guessing because they don't have policies this egregious.

The article itself mentions that Mt. Sinai and Weill Cornell "offer luxury accommodations and personal concierge services to patients who can afford them," so it's not like they're being ignored — but prioritizing rich people for emergency treatment seems like it may be unique to NYU.

That's not how hospitals work. All hospitals...including the publics run on net patient service revenue. They send the bill for services off to Medicaid, Medicare or private insurance and get reimbursement. All the hospitals that treat mostly Medicaid patients, including the privates, get some type of "extra" funding but usually not a lot. It's usually through the Disproportionate Share program and the Indigent Care Pool. In the years we have a mayor that chooses to support NYC Health and Hospitals (which so far has been deBlasio) - there is also a city subsidy. A lot of that is for outpatient services which runs at massive losses because its servicing the undocumented population of NYC as well.

But no outside funding stabilizes losses which are structural and built into the payer mix. Hospitals that don't have enough private insurance patients run at a loss. And while they aren't supposed to turn away Medicaid patients - they obviously do. NYU and Bellevue are literally right next to each other. NYU has 15% Medicaid and Bellevue has 81% Medicaid. All things being equal.. Why wouldn't Medicaid patients choose the "better" hospital if they actually could?

That isn't because of some freak of statistics. It's because NYU gives privileges to doctors who keep very few Medicaid patient appointments a month and have a long waiting list for new Medicaid patients. And when Medicaid patients come through the ED they tell them the wait is shorter at Bellevue or they don't have the right kind of physician for them on, or they don't have beds in case of an admit...in the case of psych patients they literally wheel them over to the Bellevue ED even though NYU does have psych beds (Bellevue is larger because it has more psych beds but otherwise they are both in the 800-900 bed range.) Bellevue would never say or do these things because it's contrary to their mission.

Your socioeconomic class...including the type of insurance you have, determines the quality of health care you get in NYC and around the country. But NYC happens to be particularly stratified. If you ever need to use Medicaid (or even Medicare to a lesser degree) be prepared to only be allowed to use the shitty hospitals and providers.

Huh? Doctors still admit people or don't. They aren't going to admit someone that can be treated on an outpatient basis for no reason.

They can't find a SNF willing to take a Medicaid patient so they end up sitting in the hospital (years no...a couple months is normal, seriously LOS data is public information. ) Hospitals do the exact same thing. They find ways to prioritize non Medicaid patients, particularly private insurance patients the same way SNFs do. They aren't supposed to turn away Medicaid patients because they are on Medicaid but the massive disparities in payer mix mean that they find a way to do it. This is literally the system that has been created and allowed to perpetuate. The SNFs are doing the exact same thing the hospitals are doing and vice versa because they are rational actors.

And Payment Topology is also public information. You can look at the public all payer dataset on line. EMTALA isn't treatment, it's just stabilization. And outside women in labor, it's pretty rare. It's actually pretty rare for women in labor too. Because NY actually has a very low uninsured population. Our Medicaid program is pretty expansive here. But it only gets you access to 3rd class or maybe 2nd class treatment.

They are both acute care hospitals. NYUs mission is to treat rich people who can pay. Bellevue mission is to treat anyone who is sick. It shocks me that people are ok with that.

That quote does not address the ER policies explicitly and NYU would issue a similar statement if asked. I would like to know which rich person was waiting in the hallways of Mount Sinai or Weill Cornell. No one is willing to offer a quote of how they are just like a commoner?

Patently false.

You act like this a conspiracy unique to NYU. Every hospital does everything possible to optimize their payer mix. Rural hospitals are failing left and right because their patients are shitty Medicaid payers. Then dems laugh because they didn’t graciously accept the Medicaid expansion.

We literally have a patient sitting in our ICU bed who has been here for 10 years. Not an exaggeration. Routinely common for SNF placement patients to sit here for months.

These patients are exploiting hospitals for millions and the government sits idly by since it’s the hospitals problem, not theirs. NYU has plenty of these patients.

And you trust a journalist who knows absolutely nothing about anything?

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.

Money talks. If they want to end the ability for people to donate money to these institutions it might help but even then I doubt it would fully remedy the problem.

Rich people even pay a third party service staffed by doctors and NPs who will meet you at the hospital and be your advocate, talking with the medical staff, reviewing all the charts and orders and being on top of it to make sure your shit is taken care of. It's nice to be rich.

> Your socioeconomic class...including the type of insurance you have, determines the quality of health care you get in NYC and around the country.

This happens even in western europe, where everyone has coverage but people with more money can pay for upgraded service or to skip the queue. I don't know any country where a billionaire or whatever their equivalent of a senator is differently in the hospital.

This seems universal.

Most hospitals have VIP rooms designated, some even VIP wings and suites.

You really think Bill Clinton didn’t get special treatment for his heart surgery years ago? He didn’t even check himself in. His staff and the hospital would have coordinated all that, and taken steps to protect his privacy. I’m sure the staff who took care of him were all hand selected. Even down to whomever cleaned the room.

Your poor ass gets whatever is available. If available, you get whatever doctor is on duty.

Here's a comment I just found on the nytimes website:

>S.B.

>S.F. Dec. 22

>There should be no Ronald O. Perelman Center for Emergency Services.

>There should be no NYU Langone Medical Center.

>There should be no Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center.

>Every last individual with their name on the facade of a hospital because they coughed up millions of dollars should have been TAXED at least that much to pay for those hospitals. Then they can be named after people who devoted their lives to caring for the sick.

This will surely encourage more large donations.

What an idiot!

Thanks. I wonder how some people would try and raise money on behalf of hospitals if they started telling major donors, "Don't expect any special treatment. You're just like everyone else."

nah you 100% should

Hear hear. There's a lot of irresponsible comments being made in this comment section.

I can't believe you can make a comment like that with a straight face.

> These people clog up hospital beds for no reason other than to receive a single dose of ceftriaxone each day.

Okay, so what? If he needs it, he gets it and is out in a few hours. That's the hospital literally doing its job.

Also, the remark "we should send him to a city hospital" is deeply bothersome. Why exactly should he go to a city hospital? Isn't he already in a hospital that should give him adequate care.

That's true and the food is better than the stuff on the second floor of Milstein but it's hardly Daniel.

> We would be on rounds and it would be mentioned that X room was off limits due to VIP status

It should have been explained to you that any patient can refuse to participate in rounds.

> Not at nyu but I went to dropoff and wait for my friend to get surgery. Even though it was just sitting around for the whole day, I made sure to dress semi nicely, wear jewelry and makeup and look like someone that can afford a good lawyer even though I was just sitting in the waiting room.

A very wise move. On thosee occasions when I would have to take my late mother to the hospital and I was not dressed in business clothes, I would always leave the head nurse one of my lawyer business cards.

> 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.

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Not until he brings in his staff for friends treated at McKeen.

It’s a very sad story and there’s no doubt in my mind that lots of people die from substandard care due to being poor or not having someone in the hospital to advocate for them and stay on top of the care plan. I have two nurses in my family and they always talk about how important it is to have an advocate in order to get proper care.

My only point was that this isn’t an NYU problem per se, the problem is systemic and only regulation can fix systemic issues.

No. I am talking about people who literally sit in hospital beds for months getting daily ceftriaxone

They can't afford doctors to go to them? They gotta inconvenience everybody else?

Thanks for sharing this. Glad they’re being reviewed

Thanks for sharing this. Glad they’re being reviewed

Okay. Didn't even know that was a thing tbh.

That being said, I don't see any indication that this was the case with the undocumented immigrant.