Two foreign patients stuck in Emergencies. “This is the national priority applied to a hospital”
A Bolivian man with an incurable tumor has spent almost a week in the unit without being transferred to the ward at Puerta de Hierro hospital, and a boy of Peruvian origin has been there for 14 days. Workers believe that management saves costs with immigrants without family who are not going to file a complaint.
The bed meeting is the informal name given to the daily morning meeting between the management of Puerta de Hierro and the heads of all the hospital's departments. During this time, the most controversial cases are reviewed and an attempt is made to solve any problems that may have arisen. The admissions and discharges that have taken place in the Emergency department are discussed with absolute precision: the computer knows the hours and minutes each patient has been admitted.
They ensure that no one, as far as possible, stays there for more than 24 hours. They must either send them home or transfer them to a ward to continue their treatment within the hospital - emergency departments, by their nature, are a place of transit. However, over the past two weeks, two people have become stuck in the system.
Carmelo, a 72-year-old Bolivian man with an incurable tumor, and Ángel, an 18-year-old Peruvian boy with intellectual disabilities, have been stranded in the Emergency department for so long that they have become part of the landscape.
Translated by urgent.news. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
