How NYU’s Emergency Room Favors the Rich

Emergency room workers said these arrangements for V.I.P.s sometimes delayed critical care for sicker patients.

In late 2019, doctors were racing to rescue a patient in cardiac arrest. One pushed the gurney toward one of the private rooms meant for life-or-death emergencies. Another sat atop the unconscious patient, performing chest compressions. When they arrived at the room, they could not enter — a V.I.P. occupied it. The patient survived, but two workers who witnessed the episode said the delay could have been deadly.

Ms. Greiner said, “Without the patient’s information, we cannot investigate this claim other than to say that at NYU Langone, there is one standard of care for all patients.”

The Times identified many similar examples.

For example, a relative of someone on the hospital’s leadership team went into the emergency room with chest pain and was promptly taken to a private room, even as a man experiencing a life-threatening emergency — a blockage of blood to one of his limbs — was put in the hallway, according to the accreditation group’s investigation.

Another time, at the instruction of a hospital administrator, a V.I.P. patient with asymptomatic Covid was seen by pulmonology and infectious-disease specialists who had to be pulled away from sicker patients, according to two medical workers with direct knowledge of the case.

Ms. Greiner said that The Times had not provided enough information for her to be able to respond definitively, but that the asymptomatic patient might have had an underlying illness.

Dr. Michelle Romeo, who was a resident in the emergency room from 2017 until 2021, recalled when a famous actor with a headache and low-grade fever jumped to the front of the line for a CT scan, cutting off a nursing home resident who had possible sepsis and had been waiting for three hours.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/22/health/nyu-langone-emergency-room-vip.html