_KCTV5 Report: How Does A Man Die Unnoticed In An Ambulance?
_ Most people might assume that when they are in an ambulance during a medical
emergency that they will have a trained medical professional monitoring them
all the way to the hospital.
Chief investigative reporter Dana Wright raised some serious questions after a local man died in an ambulance and no one noticed.
On Jan. 19, during a snowstorm, a 52-year-old Northlander was put in a Kansas City Fire Department ambulance with one paramedic and one EMT for a transfer from one hospital to another. He was in their care for an hour and a half, just inches away from medical technology and trained professionals.
So how is it possible that the man died and nobody noticed?
When Frank Nigro first came home complaining of neck pain, his tight-knit family in the Northland didn't think much of it. He went to the emergency room for treatment and they sent him home with pain pills for a strained neck. But two days later, after what seemed like a simple neck injury, Nigro could no longer get up so his family called 911.
The family said by the time Nigro reached St. Luke's Northland, he could no longer feel the right side of his body. An MRI revealed a lesion on his spinal cord, his family said. It was something so serious that he was loaded into an ambulance for a transfer to St. Luke's on the Plaza, where a neurosurgeon was standing by.
Frank Nigro never made it out of the ambulance alive.
Nigro's daughter-in-law was the first to arrive at the hospital expecting just to visit.
"He looked dead," she said. "More than dead. It made my stomach turn."
The family said Nigro had no color when he arrived at the hospital because he had been dead long before he got to the hospital.
KCTV5 obtained the ambulance run sheet that confirmed that it was, "unknown at what time change in patient occurred."
It was only when the crew went to unload Nigro at the emergency room that they noticed the, "patient appeared pulse less ... apneic with no heart tones ...."
Hospital records indicate that when the crew arrived with Nigro, his body was "cyanotic" and "cool to the touch." St. Luke's on the Plaza listed him as D.O.A., or dead on arrival.
Yet family members said as they arrived to visit Nigro, no one told them he died. The family learned what happened from KCTV5.
With the family's permission, KCTV5 filed a string of open records requests with the Fire Department to try to figure out what happened, but every request was denied.
EMS veteran David Shrader, who has worked for and directed various EMS systems for 37 years and now teaches ambulance systems all over the world how to operate better, said the fact that Nigro was experiencing right-side paralysis -- a classic sign of a stroke -- should have meant he needed to be hooked up to monitors and watched closely.
"In the EMS system in my local community, this patient would have been attached to a cardiac monitor, a noninvasive blood pressure device and a pulse oximeter for the entire trip," he said.
In looking over Nigro's run sheet, Shrader said it appears the crew checked his vitals only one time inside the ambulance, based on the stamps provided. Nigro could have been dead up to 41 minutes before the crew noticed.
"I would rather have him just been here or been around somebody that loved him or was watching over him or taking care of him," Nigro's son said. "I feel like everything wasn't done to save him. They have a job to do. This is a person's life."
Chief investigative reporter Dana Wright raised some serious questions after a local man died in an ambulance and no one noticed.
On Jan. 19, during a snowstorm, a 52-year-old Northlander was put in a Kansas City Fire Department ambulance with one paramedic and one EMT for a transfer from one hospital to another. He was in their care for an hour and a half, just inches away from medical technology and trained professionals.
So how is it possible that the man died and nobody noticed?
When Frank Nigro first came home complaining of neck pain, his tight-knit family in the Northland didn't think much of it. He went to the emergency room for treatment and they sent him home with pain pills for a strained neck. But two days later, after what seemed like a simple neck injury, Nigro could no longer get up so his family called 911.
The family said by the time Nigro reached St. Luke's Northland, he could no longer feel the right side of his body. An MRI revealed a lesion on his spinal cord, his family said. It was something so serious that he was loaded into an ambulance for a transfer to St. Luke's on the Plaza, where a neurosurgeon was standing by.
Frank Nigro never made it out of the ambulance alive.
Nigro's daughter-in-law was the first to arrive at the hospital expecting just to visit.
"He looked dead," she said. "More than dead. It made my stomach turn."
The family said Nigro had no color when he arrived at the hospital because he had been dead long before he got to the hospital.
KCTV5 obtained the ambulance run sheet that confirmed that it was, "unknown at what time change in patient occurred."
It was only when the crew went to unload Nigro at the emergency room that they noticed the, "patient appeared pulse less ... apneic with no heart tones ...."
Hospital records indicate that when the crew arrived with Nigro, his body was "cyanotic" and "cool to the touch." St. Luke's on the Plaza listed him as D.O.A., or dead on arrival.
Yet family members said as they arrived to visit Nigro, no one told them he died. The family learned what happened from KCTV5.
With the family's permission, KCTV5 filed a string of open records requests with the Fire Department to try to figure out what happened, but every request was denied.
EMS veteran David Shrader, who has worked for and directed various EMS systems for 37 years and now teaches ambulance systems all over the world how to operate better, said the fact that Nigro was experiencing right-side paralysis -- a classic sign of a stroke -- should have meant he needed to be hooked up to monitors and watched closely.
"In the EMS system in my local community, this patient would have been attached to a cardiac monitor, a noninvasive blood pressure device and a pulse oximeter for the entire trip," he said.
In looking over Nigro's run sheet, Shrader said it appears the crew checked his vitals only one time inside the ambulance, based on the stamps provided. Nigro could have been dead up to 41 minutes before the crew noticed.
"I would rather have him just been here or been around somebody that loved him or was watching over him or taking care of him," Nigro's son said. "I feel like everything wasn't done to save him. They have a job to do. This is a person's life."