Media: Woman dies after 16-hour wait at hospital in southern Romania

A 70-year old woman from Constanța, a city on the Romanian Black Sea coast, died after waiting for more than 12 hours in the hallway of the Constanța County Hospital, Mediafaxreported.

On February 1, she arrived at the hospital around 7 in the morning, complaining of chest and stomach pain. After 12 hours she got an EKG, and after another 4 hours she was moved to a bed. An hour later, she died in her son’s arms.

The woman’s son filed a complaint with the Police, which opened a homicide investigation.

Representatives of the hospital say the woman was treated as a ‘green code’ patient upon arrival, which means she had to be seen by a doctor within at most 60 minutes. The hospital has opened its own investigation into the case.

“The patient was seen as a ‘green code’ within approximately 30 minutes from arriving at the Emergency Department, she underwent various detailed tests (chest x-ray and CT scan) and was evaluated by the doctors on call (emergency, cardiology, internal medicine). Later, the condition of the patient deteriorated and she received a ‘red code’ label, but unfortunately the efforts of the doctors to resuscitate her were outside the therapeutic resources,” a spokesperson of the hospital said.

The Police and the hospital are waiting for the results of the autopsy to establish the cause of the woman’s death.

By law, the waiting times in the emergency departments of hospitals can be in between 0 and 240 minutes, depending on the seriousness of the case. The law also stipulates fines of up to RON 3,000 (EUR 638) for doctors and up to RON 30,000 (EUR 6,276) for hospitals if patients who come in the emergency departments are left waiting past the legal time-frame.

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