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Keep an eye on your premises - and make sure your employees do, too!
By Lauren | December 4, 2009
Continuing my Friday series on keeping your business out of court, let’s take a look at a recent incident at a Philadelphia hospital. School counselor Joaquin Rivera died of an apparent heart attack in Atria Health’s emergency room after reportedly waiting for almost 80 minutes to see a triage nurse. To add insult to injury, three homeless drug addicts nearby allegedly stole his watch before anyone on the hospital staff noticed that Mr. Rivera had passed away.
If Mr. Rivera’s family doesn’t sue the hospital, it’ll be a minor miracle.
One of the fundamental responsibilities of a manager is to know what’s happening in the office, shop, or other facility that houses the company’s business (and yes, hospitals are businesses). People get busy, though, and no one can be everywhere at once. That’s why it’s important for your employees to keep an eye out too, and to let you know when something’s going wrong so you can take action before your company gets set up for a lawsuit.
Emergency rooms are usually busy places, and the hospital staff may have had their hands full taking care of other patients in crisis. Still, if Mr. Rivera was ignored for over an hour, it’s hard to believe that he received adequate medical care. The alleged theft of his watch makes matters even worse, because it suggests that the hospital was not only short on doctors, but understaffed on security, too. Even in these tough economic times, a business really needs to have enough people on staff to make sure that someone is always watching out for its customers’ interests.
Topics: Professional Ethics, Risk Management, business communications, customer relations, ethics |
December 5th, 2009 at 4:29 am
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