A woman who lay bleeding on the emergency room floor of a troubled Los Angeles inner-city hospital died after 911 dispatchers refused to contact paramedics or an ambulance to send her to another facility, it was reported Tuesday. Edith Isabel Rodriguez, 43, died of a perforated bowel on May 9 at Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital. Her death was ruled accidental by the Los Angeles County coroner's office.Relatives said she was bleeding from the mouth and writhing in pain for 45 minutes. Experts have said Rodriguez could have survived had she been treated early enough. The head of the county's Department of Health Services, which oversees the facility, has called her death "inexcusable."On Tuesday, the Los Angeles Times' Web site posted audio from two 911 calls that were released by the county Sheriff's Department under the newspaper's California Public Records Act request.In them, callers pleaded for help but were referred to hospital staff instead.A call to a sheriff's spokesman seeking comment was not immediately returned Tuesday.Rodriguez's boyfriend, Jose Prado, used a pay phone outside the hospital to call 911 at 1:43 a.m."I'm in the emergency room. My wife is dying and the nurses don't want to help her out," he said in Spanish through an interpreter."What's wrong with her?" a dispatcher asked."She's vomiting blood," Prado said."OK, and why aren't they helping her?" the dispatcher asked."They're watching her there and they're not doing anything. They're just watching her," Prado said.The dispatcher told the man to contact a doctor and then said paramedics wouldn't pick up his wife because she already was in a hospital. Later, she told Prado to contact county police officers at a security desk.A second 911 call was placed eight minutes later by a woman bystander who requested that an ambulance be sent to take Rodriguez to some other hospital for care."She's definitely sick and there's a guy that's ignoring her," the woman told a different dispatcher.During the brief call, the dispatcher argued with the woman over whether there really was an emergency."I cannot do anything for you for the quality of the hospital. ... It is not an emergency. It is not an emergency ma'am," he said."You're not here to see how they're treating her," the woman replied.The dispatcher refused to call paramedics and told the woman that she should contact hospital supervisors "and let them know" if she is unhappy."May God strike you too for acting the way you just acted," the woman said finally."No, negative ma'am, you're the one," he said.Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital was formerly known as Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center. The name was changed as part of a reorganization after years of problems including patient deaths blamed on sloppy nursing care and hospital mismanagement that has threatened its federal funding.
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