Woman says medics lied about walking her dying dad down the stairs. Complaint sparks probe finding many more problems in Worcester, MA.
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Not the type of headline any organization likes to see in the local newspaper. What started with Aisha Waller’s complaint about a discrepancy in a report has blossomed into quite a bit more.
Waller spotted in her father’s medical records a notation that an EMS crew from UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester, Massachusetts, reported they carried Charles Rondeau down three flights of stairs when he was short of breath last Mothers Day. Waller knew that wasn’t the case, because she was there and watched the crew walk her dad to the ambulance. Charles Rondeau died from a myocardial infarction 30-minutes after being taken to the hospital.
According to Waller, she spoke to Stephen Haynes, the chief of UMass Memorial EMS and explained what she knew.
This is Waller’s account of that conversation, as told to Thomas Caywood at Telegram.com:
“I told him that was not true. He asked me how I knew that, and I told him I was there. He said he’d check and that he’d get back to me,” Ms. Waller said. “While I was talking to him, I didn’t feel like he was taking me seriously.”
Mr. Haynes never called back, she said.
This prompted the family to contact a lawyer and eventually the state Department of Public Health. The state officials began looking at the incident in January:
The four-month investigation uncovered serious, widespread and persistent problems within the ambulance service that extend beyond what happened to Mr. Rondeau, according to a stinging Notice of Serious Deficiency issued by the DPH earlier this month.
Caywood takes a detailed look at those problems in his article. Click here.
