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Parents Break Teen Out of Mayo Clinic

minnesota.cbslocal.com

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Re: Parents Break Teen Out of Mayo Clinic

#51

Post by larkeith »

gouggoug wrote: post #36

I am having a hard time understanding how Mayo was able to basically hold one of their patient hostage. Isn't that akin to kidnapping? But also: What prevented Alyssa from getting up her bed and walk out? When did her parents start "figuring out how to escape " and how long for? If they were at that point were they believed they needed to "escape" from the hospital, why didn't they call the police?

> What prevented Alyssa from getting up her bed and walk out?

She needed to be pushed out in a wheelchair. She was presumably only provided access to one due to the pretext of "Grandma Betty" who (it was claimed) could not access Alyssa's room. Additionally, hospital staff attempted to physically restrain her from leaving, which may have been more successful without the ruse.

> If they were at that point were they believed they needed to "escape" from the hospital, why didn't they call the police?

This is a good question that's not fully addressed by the article, however, given that the police initially did side with the hospital when it came to a "our word vs theirs" situation, it may have been the correct choice.

Re: Parents Break Teen Out of Mayo Clinic

#52

Post by codezero »

My mother in-law was kept at a facility when we wanted to transfer her to a better one, but we were given lots of run-around and people insisted everything was fine. She died. She might have died anyways, but we'll never get to know. We had serious concerns with her care and nobody was her advocate to getting better care, except my wife (her daughter) and she was dealing with a morass of bureaucracy that nobody should have to deal with when someone is in critical condition. I follow the age old advice of most of the older members of my family: stay out of hospitals as long as you can, once you go in, you don't have much control over when you come out again, if at all.

Re: Parents Break Teen Out of Mayo Clinic

#53

Post by luddaite »

ars wrote: post #46
luddaite wrote: post #17

It's easy to attribute this whole situation to greed and/or malice but I think that fails Hanlon's razor. I can easily see this whole situation occurring because of poor communication and the culture of paternalism in medicine. It is not hard to imagine a team of healthcare providers that know or think they know what is good for their patient and do a poor job explaining why they are making the decisions that they ar…

> I can easily see this whole situation occurring because of poor communication and the culture of paternalism in medicine. I can see it starting that way, but there is an absolute line the hospital should have never crossed: People have the right to chose what medical treatment they want. They crossed the line.

We don't know the full story and likely never will. What if the doctors were correct in their assessment that the patient was unfit to make medical decisions and that she was being coerced by parents to act against her own best interest? I would be interested in looking at her medical record to try and understand what was really going on but that is unlikely to ever happen. There is really bad information asymmetry here because the hospital is legally prohibited from releasing any medical information but the patient can choose to reveal as much or as little as they wish.

Re: Parents Break Teen Out of Mayo Clinic

#54

Post by larkeith »

luddaite wrote: post #45
larkeith wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree this type of situation is likely most often due to miscommunication, that doesn't preclude certain instances from being malicious in intent (possibly including this one - we really don't have enough information to attribute motive and cause, but there are enough odd behaviors on the Mayo clinic's part that I hesitate to employ Hanlon's razor). The hospital's ethics council only works as a solution to gr…

Ethics councils are often hybrid in nature, including members of the local community that do not stand to benefit financially from patient care. I agree that informing patients about the presence of these governing bodies is a difficult problem. However, many bad situations would be avoided if the information was disseminated as standard procedure at the earliest possible convenience (before disagreement has a chance…

I was unaware of this design for the ethics councils. In that case, I agree that this would go a long way towards alleviating the problem - even if it's not completely unbiased, even a few unaffiliated members can be a major moderating influence.

Thank you for the information, your suggestion seems like a very effective way of minimizing future incidents.

Re: Parents Break Teen Out of Mayo Clinic

#56

Post by briandear »

modells wrote: post #26
lylecubed wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's unconscionable to suggest that hospitals be allowed to legally kidnap people because of something as hand wavy as 'some homeless are mentally ill'.

Reagan’s LPS Act didn’t apply any nuance, common-sense or transition when defunding JFK’s community treatment program, and just dumped people whom aren’t in contact with reality or self-care onto the street. Complete lawlessness is infinite tyranny.

https://www.nytimes.com/1984/10/30/science/how-release-of-me...

Also, O’Conner vs. Donaldson was the key case that caused a significant shift in mental health treatment.

Blaming Reagan is intellectually lazy.

Re: Parents Break Teen Out of Mayo Clinic

#57

Post by larkeith »

arkades wrote: post #22

As a HIPAA issue, the Mayo cannot defend itself here - it has no right to disclose any information on this patient’s stay or condition. Key quote, >“You’re only hearing one side,” cautioned Dr. Chris Feudtner, a professor of pediatrics, medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. They “broke her out” while she still had a feeding tube in place, and had only just “Th…

> A spokeswoman for the Mayo Clinic said hospital officials would be willing to answer CNN's questions if Alyssa signed a privacy release form giving them permission to discuss her case publicly with CNN. The spokeswoman, Ginger Plumbo, supplied that form to CNN.

> Alyssa signed the form, but Plumbo declined to answer CNN's questions on the record.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/13/health/mayo-clinic-escape-1-e...

Re: Parents Break Teen Out of Mayo Clinic

#58

Post by hobs »

codezero wrote: post #52

My mother in-law was kept at a facility when we wanted to transfer her to a better one, but we were given lots of run-around and people insisted everything was fine. She died. She might have died anyways, but we'll never get to know. We had serious concerns with her care and nobody was her advocate to getting better care, except my wife (her daughter) and she was dealing with a morass of bureaucracy that nobody shoul…

Yep, I was extremely strenuous in keeping up with nurses and doctor's about my father's condition, and luckily he only left with a blood clot that permanently changed his life due to their negligence.

Didn't sue because it was too hard to prove.

Re: Parents Break Teen Out of Mayo Clinic

#59

Post by paxy »

arkades wrote: post #22

As a HIPAA issue, the Mayo cannot defend itself here - it has no right to disclose any information on this patient’s stay or condition. Key quote, >“You’re only hearing one side,” cautioned Dr. Chris Feudtner, a professor of pediatrics, medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. They “broke her out” while she still had a feeding tube in place, and had only just “Th…

Except on the same day another world-class hospital decided that she was healthy enough to go home..

Re: Parents Break Teen Out of Mayo Clinic

#60

Post by lapinot »

ams6110 wrote: post #19
outside1234 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the flip side, we have thousands of obviously mentally ill people on the street homeless because we can't commit them because of that human autonomy that you mention. It all points to public healthcare where there is governance at a political level and not profit level.

> It all points to public healthcare where there is governance at a political level and not profit level. Might want to consider that political abuse of psychiatric diagnoses to get opponents or agitators involuntarily committed to asylums or hospitals is not exactly unheard of.

This is plain stupid. A for-profit hospital will benefit from abusing any patient while a political abuse only targets a small portion of opponents. And political abuse is an issue of the counter-powers in your political system, not of the way hospitals work: a functional political system will have functional public hospitals, but a functional economy will have private hospitals whose interests diverge substantially from the patients ones.
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