Critcal Path Network: Case continues: Was man discharged too soon?
May 1, 2007
Critical Path Network
Case continues: Was man discharged too soon?
HCCC investigates hospital
The Health Care Complaints Commission (HCCC) will continue to investigate charges that the Dubbo Base Hospital failed to follow up on blood test results in a patient who died a year ago from a heart infection.
The patient's mother, Doreen Dawson, says her son's death could have been avoided if he was kept in the hospital until the test results arrived. According to an ABC News story, the HCCC found that the emergency department's decision to discharge the 47-year-old man when they thought he had gastroenteritis "was not unreasonable."
Dawson says the commission will continue to seek more information.
"When he left the hospital, he had to be helped into a taxi and he could not stand up, and yet they said he was clinically stable when he was discharged," she says.