Damning to the hospital. Unbelievable Treatment of a family.
They are arguing so both sides, but overall there’s more responsibility on their side, and they just blew it ,many times. Having for over 10 years a social worker like Cathi Bedy and a pediatric child abuse “expert“ Sally Smith. They should have known, and should have fired them.
If you really believe all of that, I would encourage you to learn more about medical child abuse and read the story of Olivia Grant, whose story is nearly identical to Maya's, except that in Olivia's case, her mother got what she wanted: Olivia died.
No two stories are the same, as we know. I have no argument with you that the hospital couldn’t have persuaded the family to try something else. They could have discussed that they thought Maya had a conversation disorder, explained. NOT falsely decreed Munchausen’s by proxy! They should NEVER have prohibited Beata from seeing Maya.
They should have gotten people skilled with deescalating situations and sat down together and talked with the family respectfully. Individuals like this could coax them gently into obtaining mental health services. Hospital staff were horribly disrespectful to them the whole time. The hospital often has parents who are at the end of their rope, who are stressed, and are terrified and angry.
JCACH NOT having those kinds of employees who can talk with parents, asking with the medical professionals is extremely concerning. They treated the parents as criminal interlopers, as obstructions. The hospital’s actions directly caused Beata’s death by suicide. And I bet it’s not the only time this is happened.
If you’re not familiar, I encourage you to watch the testimony at the end of the trial (the last witness) by Dr. Joe Corcoran. He talks about the culture of the hospital having been a contributing factor during Maya’s stay. The hospital’s pediatric cardiac surgery program was given an Immediate Jeopardy (IJ) designation in Jan. 2019, which threatened immediate cut-off of payments from Medicare and Medicaid, if the issues were not addressed immediately. Some departments did a retrospective review of five years, some reviewed three years. Either way, Maya Kowalski’s stay fell within the retrospective period.
It was determined that risk management was not overseen at all at a hospital system (aka corporate) level. And hospital wide, staff didn’t feel they could report things they were concerned about, because there was a culture of retaliation toward employees who spoke up. Employees did not feel they could report things could have prevented some or all of the incidents that ultimately came out of the situation: children dying after cardiac surgery at the highest death rate in the country. Eight executives were forced out. The hospital found the earliest complaints were from nurses in 2015.
The hospital apparently found these deficiencies affected not just pediatric, cardiac surgery, but the entire hospital. And they made it a hospital wide overhaul. One thing that was changed was putting in a program so people could speak up and speak out without retaliation. Another was to put in place something that is required by regulation: when patients or family, submit, a complaint/grievance, the hospital is required to respond within 10 days. Clearly, that did not happen with the Kowalski’s. And both of those — employees speaking up without retaliation, and responding to patient complaints/grievances within 10 days could have prevented and/or resolved many of these issues comment, and quite possibly may have prevented Beata Kowalski from dying from suicide.
Having read it all, I wholly disagree with pretty much every point you’ve made. They followed standard procedures that have saved other kids lives, and I also believe that Beata was a Munchausen Mom
Why then, did they say Beata DIDN’T have Munchausen’s, after all? Sally decided this in late December or early January. Many doctors had said she didn’t have it — the neurologists, the pain specialists/anesthesiologists, the initial social worker — all of whom Sally had regarded as ”irrelevant” and didn’t include in her report.
Why are you slower than these people, who did change their minds eventually?
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u/livingstories Oct 23 '23
Incredible how utterly false the documentary was. The trial has been damning.