Patient dies 12 hours after being sent home!

Photo: MTI/Balogh Zoltán

The 72-year-old man was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease three years ago, and although his condition was getting worse, he could still eat and get out of bed on his own. After a cerebral infarction on April 11, his left side was paralysed, but he was still sent home from the hospital on April 21.

Because of the current pandemic, a certain number of hospital beds had to be made available, and many patients had to be sent home. While the man was in the hospital, his wife called his doctor every two days to check up on her husband’s progress, reported Index.

On April 20, Mária Nagyné Kiss received a phone call from her husband’s doctor that he could not be transferred to the rehabilitation facility, as it had to be cleared out, so they were sending him home.

“He told me he was in a condition that I could take care of him at home. I would be able to change him, and feeding should not be a problem because he can eat solid food, even meatballs,” the woman said.

As we have reported before, the Ministry of Human resources ordered hospitals to make 50 per cent of their beds available by April 19. This means a total of 39,500 beds.

Photo: Google Maps Streetview

The Chief Medical Officer, Cecília Müller, said that whether a patient is sent home also depends on their condition, not just on the number of beds, but asked relatives of the patients to understand and help the hospitals’ needs to clear out hospitals. She promised that no one could be sent home if their health would worsen because of it.

Mária Nagyné Kiss believes her husband was sent home to die, despite his final report saying he was in a “satisfactory general condition.” She also does not believe the hospital told her the truth about how feeding the half-paralysed man would be easy.

“I tried to feed him ham and pasta that I chopped up into half a centimetre pieces, but he could not swallow it. Eventually, I blended it and diluted it with milk. We finished in 45 minutes,” she said.

Mária changed her husband that night and went to turn him over in bed when she noticed blood leaking from his mouth. She called an ambulance, and the paramedics tried to resuscitate him, but they were unsuccessful.

Index contacted the hospital in Orosháza about why the man was deemed to be in a well-enough condition to be sent home, and about whether the patients are tested for coronavirus before being transported home.

They replied that the man did not require medical treatment anymore, and no patient who did was sent home. They also said that the hospital is currently not treating coronavirus patients, and patients are tested according to current procedures.