Good, informative article. As a retired nurse, I would be a liar or a coward if I made the statements that puppy made. If I have "seen travesties of justice" in the hospitals I worked and did not speak up, then I have deserted my patients and my ethics as a nurse. Nurses and doctors have to be part of the solution and not sit back and point fingers. Leaving foreign objects in a patient or removing a healthy organ, that's on doctors. Bed sores, UTIs and other line infections, that's on nurses. Reporting these events, that's on administration.

I thought he was going to lead the charge to fix UMC and get it affiliated with a teaching and research organization. Has he given up on that already?

Unless poker starts using a ball, it's not a sport.

"The intake coordinator, who had assessed the suicide risk, said the social worker was to follow up with the physician and arrange transportation to the psychiatric hospital, the investigation found. The intake coordinator said that because of the suicide risk she "assumed the facility would watch the patient closely," the report said."

This intake coordinator is employed by the psych hospital. Did she actually communicate this risk to hospital staff??? say "was to follow up..." and "assumed" does not say that she actually communicated.

"But neither the social worker nor the case manager read the intake assessment."

"MountainView's medical records document no evidence that a self-harm risk assessment was completed by the emergency room staff..."

No wonder they didn't read it. It wasn't in the patient's chart!

The problem here is that the psychiatric hospital's intake coordinator did not do her job well. You don't show up in the ER and assess that a patient is suicidal and NOT tell the doctors and nurses. You have to tell them AND write it in the patients chart which she also apparently did not do.

So much of this story bashes Mountainview and not enough focuses on the poor performance of the psych hospital employee.

Mountainview is not a psychiatric hospital and hospital ERs are not the appropriate place for psychiatric patients to be held. The docs and nurses at that ER are trained to take care of heart attacks, strokes, trauma and other physical ailments. I agree there was some breakdown of communication, but with all the news about our over-crowded emergency rooms during the last few years, is it really surprising that paperwork wasn't completed very quickly? How many ER patients were there that day? The system is distressed and the needs of psychiatric patients will never be adequately addressed in ERs.

There are a lot of great doctors out there. Unfortunately, there are a lot of abusive ones too. I'm glad to see this guy being held accountable for his actions.

Desrt Vu hit the nail on the head. Las Vegas is an inherently unhealthy place to live. We have more smokers, obese people, high school drop outs, drinkers etc than anywhere else in the country. The readmission rate is not surprsing given this population. The insurance companies are part of the healthcare system. They contract with the lowest bidders. Sending someone 120 miles away will, of course, show a decrease in readmission to the the St George hospital, because patients are unlikely to make that trip again if they need additional care for a botched procedure.

They went after the drug companies because that is where the money is. Fact is, no matter how big the bottle is, nurses and doctors at the clinic knew proper procedures for infection control and did not practice it because of their greed in performing assembly-line medicine. But you're not going to get hundreds of millions out of them.

If this stuff is going on at one hospital, it's probably going on at others too. Especially those with a trauma unit. Good job Sun. Don't let this rest.

Every candidate and politician who used and supported the phrase "racial profiling" screwed up what could be an effective way of enforcing immigration law. You don't hear racial profiling in most discussions about drug enforcement because they are talking about where drugs and drug dealers are likely to be found. If a cop rolls up in front of a home depot or some landscape nursery and asks all the guys waiting to jump in a truck for a cash paying day job for their ID, is it racial profiling just because 90% of them are hispanic? There is evidence that someone may be an illegal alien besides his or her race. Hanging out in front of a home depot or not being able to read or write the english language can be probable cause to ask for someone's state issued ID.