RELATIVES of a road accident victim in Dumanjug town accused the Barili District Hospital of negligence that resulted in his death.
Amancio Ubas Jr., a 23-year-old resident of Gunting Barili, figured in an accident last Sunday at past 5 p.m. in Tapon, Dumanjug.
Ubas was about to fetch his wife from her work in a department store in Dumanjug town when his motorcycle was hit by a Toyota Revo.
The force of the collision threw him into the sea.
Another motorcycle was also hit, but the victim survived after being transferred from Barili District Hospital to a hospital in Cebu City.
Ubas’ uncle Noli Tampus said in a radio interview that Ubas could have been alive if he had been treated promptly at the Barili District Hospital and then transferred to the hospital in Cebu City.
Ubas was brought to the Barili District Hospital at 6 p.m. but died at 9:45 p.m.
He was supposed to be transferred to the Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center in Cebu City but the hospital staff waited for the relatives.
A patient cannot be transferred without the relatives’ consent, Tampus recalled the hospital staff telling him when they arrived at 8 p.m. that night.
“The hospital staff and the security guard asked us what took us long to arrive because the patient had lost blood,” Tampus said.
He told them they didn’t know that Ubas had figured in an accident.
Tampus said they saw Ubas at the emergency room with blood flowing from his injured left leg into a pail.
“They should have treated him well and attended to his wounds,” he said.
Tampus said that when they agreed to send Ubas to Cebu City, there was no ambulance available.
They had to wait for an ambulance from barangay Patupat, Barili town.
When it arrived, Ubas wasn’t immediately transferred because the doctor was busy attending to other patients, according to the uncle.
Tampus said the hospital staff had trouble attaching Ubas’s oxygen mask.
Two nurses at the hospital denied Tampus’s allegations.
Barili Hospital nurse Aileen Perpetua and a certain Aliyah said Ubas had only a 50-50 chance of survival when he was brought to the hospital.
Perpetua said Ubas was unconscious and the medical staff headed by Dr. Jose De Leon treated the patient.
“We dressed his wounds, attached dextrose and oxygen,” Perpetua said.
Perpetua said they knew that the patient needed to be transferred immediately to Cebu City, but they had to follow protocol and wait for the relatives’ approval.
Perpetua said the other victim was transferred to another hospital because there was a relative who accompanied the patient.
If the relatives of Ubas were there earlier, she said ,the patient could have been prioritized because of his condition.
Dr. Cynthia Genesolango, chief of the Cebu Integrated Provincial Health Office, said they will investigate the incident.
She said the hospital staff knows what to do
She confirmed that protocol requires that any patient transfer must have approval of the relatives.
Perpetua said they are ready to open the hospital records for scrutiny because they extended assistance to Ubas.
The incident happened days after the Cebu provincial government came under fire from the opposition One Cebu party who accused them of failing to provide adequate medical attention to indigent patients.
An infant died at the Minglanilla District Hospital due to delay in treating the dehydrated baby, whose mother and grandmother were asked by a doctor to go out and buy P700 worth of dextrose and medicine when supplies were actually available in the stockroom.
The doctor’s contract was later terminated by Gov. Hilario Davide III after an investigation showed the doctor had a “lapse in judgement” in handling an emergency case.
The family of another boy complained that their son died of cardiac arrest hours after being brought to the same hospital.
Hospital authorities are looking into the allegation that the boy was misdiagnosed and given the wrong medicine.