The Madina Health Department is investigating how three government hospitals allegedly failed to admit a comatose elderly woman with cirrhosis of the liver. The woman ended up in an emergency room of one hospital for over seven hours because there was allegedly no bed for her. King Fahd Hospital and Al-Ansar Hospital refused to admit the case citing the lack of a bed, claimed the son of the 56-year-old woman. “We tried a third government hospital, Ohud Hospital in western Madina, that kept her waiting in the ER for over seven hours before a doctor attended to her,” he said. When the doctor examined her, he said that she had dehydration and would only need an intravenous hydration solution. “But her condition deteriorated afterwards and we took her to a private hospital,” he claimed. At the private hospital, the son was told that his mother's condition was serious and she would have liver failure if not attended to immediately. The son took his complaint Wednesday to the director of the Madina Health Department, Khaled Yasin, asking for an immediate investigation into alleged incorrect diagnosis and poor health services. Yasin ordered the formation of a medical committee to investigate the complaint, said Saeed Al-Ghamdi, spokesman of the department. The committee went immediately to Ohud Hospital and retrieved the woman's file for investigation. If the committee finds that there was no vacant bed at any of the three hospitals, the Ministry of Health will bear the expenses of her treatment at the private hospital, Al-Ghamdi said.
