Friday, April 1, 2005 | 9:06 a.m.
Ten years ago Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center allegedly hustled a sick, homeless man out of its emergency room, leaving him to die on the lawn.
The case became a symbol at the time, cited to bolster the assertion that corporate, bottom-line-driven medicine was hurting patients, particularly at hospitals run by Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corp., which at that time owned Sunrise and which became the subject of a federal investigation for Medicare fraud.
Next week a lawsuit over the death of the homeless man is scheduled to go to trial in Clark County District Court after a decade of delays.
The lawsuit being brought by the two children of Rodolfo Anguiano, Sophia and Rodolfo, accuses Sunrise, emergency room physician Dr. Susan Meyer and two emergency services companies of malpractice.
"This has been difficult for them to accept -- not only his death, but also the way he died," said the pair's lawyer, Brett Carter. Carter said the plaintiffs, who are in their early 20s and live in Southern California, were not speaking to the press because they are scheduled to testify during the trial.
"To them, it seems he died worse then a dog," Carter said. "They miss him terribly."
In court filings, Sunrise and the other defendants have denied the charges.
According to the lawsuit, paramedics brought 34-year-old Rodolfo Anguiano to Sunrise early in the morning of July 20, 1995. He was complaining of pains in his chest, according to the suit.
The suit alleges Meyer gave Anguiano a scant once-over, noting that he was "filthy dirty" and "foul smelling" but conducting no tests. Her diagnosis: "acute homelessness."
Anguiano was given juice and crackers and forced out of the hospital by security personnel, according to the lawsuit.
Physically barred from re-entering the ER, Anguiano refused to leave, insisting he was sick and needed treatment. Over the next half-hour, he began to stagger and moan, then lay on the hospital lawn motionless as security officers watched, according to the suit.
When a security guard reported that Anguiano wasn't breathing, his supervisor told him to call the police to have the body removed, the lawsuit states.
Anguiano's case came to light when Sunrise's vice president resigned, saying he was disgusted by the practices of the hospital's parent company at the time, Columbia/HCA. The company's name today is HCA Inc.
In a tell-all manuscript that never made it into print, Marc Gardner claimed Columbia employed a variety of cost-cutting and possibly illegal practices, such as giving doctors bonuses for performing more surgeries and reducing staff to dangerously low levels.
"I committed felonies every day," Gardner told The Wall Street Journal in 1997.
At the time, Columbia responded to Gardner's charges by calling him a disgruntled former employee.
Gardner said he was there when Anguiano was brought in, and he cited the case as a prime example of Columbia's disregard for patients.
The hospital's philosophy, Gardner told the ABC news show "20/20," was: "There are good patients and bad patients." Anguiano was a bad patient because he was uninsured, Gardner said.
Anguiano's children didn't find out how their father had died until a journalist investigating Gardner's allegations contacted the family, Carter said.
By that time, Anguiano had already been dead for two years. The case was further delayed by the bankruptcy of one of the defendants, Coastal Emergency Services of Dallas Inc. In its present form, the lawsuit was filed in 2000.
The suit seeks an unspecified amount of damages.
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