I mean, where I work, NOBODY gets in without a badge or an escort. Hospitals? Anybody can wander in off the street-I have never been challenged by anybody in a hospital.
I bet I could steal $100s of thousand of sophisticated equipemnt, and walk out the door.
I just don’t get it.
Many – maybe even most – hospitals operate on slender margins (1-2%) or at a loss. Given limited resources, their first priority is going to be on medical equipment, medical training, and staffing. The cost of purchasing, installing and maintaining sophisticated security equipment is simply out of reach, as a general rule.
Wait til I’m near death, then have at it.
“Police say the family had just left the woman’s bedside vigil to get some coffee when the robbers struck. They alerted the police when the family returned and noticed some misplaced items.”
________ alerted the police
a) robbers
b) police
c) family
d) pronouns- you’re doing it wrong
I think that “misplaced” is misplaced also. Shouldn’t that probably be “missing.”
My sister died in a car wreck 20+ years ago. Somewhere between the wreck and the hospital where they pronounced her dead, all her jewelry disappeared. Nothing expensive or fancy - she was only 22, not married. In other words, nothing that is of any value except to us, her family.
I sure would like to have one of her rings or the necklace she was wearing. But some fucker got it. I’m with the OP.
As far as not wearing valuable jewelry to the hospital. . .well, if I know I’m going to the hospital (pre-scheduled surgery, etc.), I do take off the necklace and both bracelets I wear on a daily basis; they are all Tanzanite and diamond, in gold.
But my wedding/engagement rings? No. They stay on. If I have to have surgery, the surgical team puts surgical tape around them to keep them from getting something nasty/contagious in the little nooks and crannies. But they have great sentimental value to me. If I were to die, in surgery, or just because of a severe kidney infection, I’d want to be wearing my rings.
I don’t know what they’d appraise for these days; there’s an 18k gold band set with a 33pt oval in the center, flanked by two 25pt pear-shaped stones; that’s the engagement ring. The wedding ring is a 14k gold band, set with five 10pt stones. When we bought them, they appraised for approx. $3,000.00 But that was more than 20 years again. Don’t know that they wouldn’t come in at close to the value of what was stolen at the hospital.
In short, the thieves are scumbags.
It was “They.” You know, “Them.”
Sure, scumbags; but no more so than any scumbag who would steal $7,000. I’m sure they did not know she was dying, that was incidental and, therefore, irrelevant when measuring the theifs’ character and the scumbagacity of the robbery.
People in the palliative care unit are all dying.
I notice that this occurred in a Canadian hospital.
Someone, somewhere, is going to use this as a knock against healthcare reform.
I can’t prove it, but I know the local police robbed my father’s corpse. When we couldn’t contect him, we call the police to check on him, because we kids were all hundreds of miles away. They found him dead in his home. He never, ever had less than several hundred dollars in his wallet, but when the police gave it to us when we got there it was empty.
We also know the Chicago police robbed my uncle’s home, of weapons, when they found him dead. He was a gun collector, and we found licenses for well over a hundred weapons, and his neighbors told is the police removed “carloads and carloads” full of guns from his house. My cousin, who ended up administering the estate, said that they later returned nine guns.
I suspect that robbing the dead, or near dead, is a far more common occurence than most people think.
Where I live many have begun decorating the graves with cheap plastic flowers because the ugly habit of stealing plants from the graves of the dead has become so commonplace.
Another result of moral relativism.
My uncle had a heart attack and died on the street in Chicago shortly after cashing his Social Security check, and had a large amount of cash on him. My brother-in-law (actually, my sister’s husband’s brother) was a Chicago cop and he commented to me later that he was surprised that my uncle still had all the money when the body was turned over to the family. “Must have been a rookie cop that found him” was the phrase he used, IIRC.
Sure; but what evidence they knew they were “in the palliative care unit”?
I would think there would be a sign or something. Are you really defending them??
Well, in this short article describing the arrest of scumbag #2, the police are quoted as saying that the two dirtballs’ ‘MO’ was to case palliative care wards.
With the followup we know they did target these wards, but I’ll just note that I get people in my office thinking it’s a totally different department all the freaking time. And yes, there are plenty of signs. (Considering that I work in ophthalmology, I bite back the question of whether they really do need to see us, and point them in the right direction.)
This is a sweet sentiment, but I’m not sure it’s a practical one. Hospitals are full of employees, visitors, auditors, ect, and you as the patient, are in a very vulnerable state. Anyone from the prep nurse to the surgeon, to the fellow who transports you to recovery afterward could get a case of sticky fingers. When going under the knife, it may be best to leave your most treasured valubles with, well, one you treasure.
“Do you have any valuables? Send them home with family, our hospital is not responsible for them,” is part of our addmition speil where I work.
Still, those guys are total dicks, even though she shouldn’t have had the ring with her.
Ordinarily, I’d make some tacky joke (tacky jokes are where I’m a viking!), but that sucks, and I’m sorry to hear it.