Morton Scheinbaum was moaning, his head resting on a desk, as he strained to answer the emergency room nurse’s questions.
He was in the throes of a fatal heart attack.
But even as Linda Scheinbaum — Morton’s wife of 24 years — was screaming for medical attention to save his life, the MountainView Hospital nurse was insisting on getting his Social Security number, emergency contact and insurance information.
“I’ll give you all the information later!” Linda Scheinbaum yelled at the clerk.
In fact, the northwest Las Vegas hospital had his records because Morton, 59, had been treated there for a heart attack a week before.
It would be Scheinbaum’s tragic misfortune to return to the emergency room on the night of Nov. 4, 2005, when it was busy and hospital officials said there were no open rooms. The Scheinbaums were told to take a seat and wait — even though a delay of just minutes can make the difference between life and death during a heart attack.
Dr. John MacGregor, a cardiologist at San Francisco General Hospital, would say later that Scheinbaum should have been rushed immediately into the emergency room for treatment. And emergency room bystanders would testify to their shock that the hospital staff failed to take his condition seriously.
The precise timeline of the events of that desperate night is in dispute, but hospital records show that it was at least 41 minutes from the time Morton Scheinbaum arrived to the time he collapsed, blue in the face and foaming at the mouth. Only then was he rushed into the emergency room for treatment.
And that’s where he died, his admission paperwork completed.
Linda Scheinbaum claims nearly an hour had passed from the time her husband arrived at the hospital in serious distress — sure that he was having a heart attack — to the time he received treatment.
She and Wendy Cannon, Morton’s daughter from a previous relationship, are suing the hospital for malpractice. Scheinbaum said she may never see a penny from the lawsuit because she and Morton divorced in 2002 to insulate her from his debt. She doesn’t care about money, she says.
“I want justice,” she said, her voice shaking. “He was left to die on the floor of the emergency room and just didn’t have a chance.”
The lawsuit is scheduled for trial in January. The evidence unearthed so far highlights the direct connection between hospital staffing and patient care. It also shows how MountainView responds — or doesn’t — to unexpected deaths. Hospital administrators concluded Scheinbaum’s death did not reach the level of a “sentinel event” — a classification that requires notification of the state and corrective action to ensure such incidents are not repeated.
An attorney representing MountainView, which is owned by the Tennessee-based Hospital Corporation of America, said neither he, hospital officials nor the nurse would comment for this story.
Morton Scheinbaum’s heart problems were genetic. He had his first heart attack when he was 31. He had the first of two five-vessel bypass surgeries in 1986, two years before he moved from Northern California to Las Vegas, where he worked in the moving business.
The couple had been in and out of emergency rooms over the years because of Morton’s heart condition. They had no complaints about the care they received for a heart attack on Oct. 25, 2005, when he was treated at MountainView for the same symptoms that led to his death a week later. When he was released, he was told to return immediately if he noticed any other problems.
A week later, on the night of the fatal heart attack, Linda went to bed early. When Morton roused her to go to the hospital she looked at the clock. It was 10 p.m.
They didn’t call an ambulance because the situation didn’t seem that dire. His heart was fluttering irregularly, just as it had the week before when they went to MountainView. She grabbed the already packed bag and quickly drove the 2.6 miles to MountainView.
Linda says they walked into the emergency room at 10:15 p.m., though there is no record of their exact time of arrival. Lanny Waite, her attorney, said security cameras in the emergency room have since been reused, destroying any possible time-stamped video evidence of their arrival.
In her deposition, Linda said that when she called her stepdaughter Wendy from the hospital, she looked at the clock and it read 10:20 p.m.
Linda said she told a woman who she thought was an admitting clerk that Morton was a heart patient suffering from chest pains, and that they needed to see a triage nurse. They were told to take a seat and wait their turn, she said.
Waite says the admitting clerk was actually a nurse, May Taylor, who was alone in the admitting and triage area and busy with another patient when the Scheinbaums sat at the other side of her cubicle. It’s unclear why a nurse would be doing admissions, Waite said.
Hospital records note that the Scheinbaums arrived about 10:30 p.m. and that Taylor started the triage process at 10:42 p.m.
While Scheinbaum waited to be administered an electrocardiogram, a test that measures heart function, Taylor took down information. That’s when Linda recalls Morton’s leaning over the desk, moaning, while they repeated the information they had given on their previous visit.
By now hysterical, Linda was pointing to a sign that says patients with chest pain should notify hospital officials so they can be attended to immediately.
Indeed, there seems to be no dispute that the nurse was putting paperwork ahead of treating Morton Scheinbaum. In her deposition, Taylor recalled Linda Scheinbaum “screaming and yelling saying that her husband is having chest pain” and that she had to “calm this screaming wife before she can settle down and give us the information.”
The doctor read the EKG results at 10:50 p.m., and signed it with an instruction: “Bring back now,” underlining the word “now.”
But that did not happen. After his EKG, Scheinbaum continued waiting in the admitting area, because hospital officials said there were no beds available.
By now, the crisis was reaching a crescendo. Sitting in the chair, Scheinbaum grabbed his chest and said, “Oh my God, here it comes!”
Witnesses told Linda afterward they would never forget her bloodcurdling screams. “Someone get me some help! He’s having a heart attack!” she remembers shouting.
A nurse ran from the back with a wheelchair, and they put him, slumping, into it. But when she pulled him back, he fell to the floor and landed on his face. Hospital staff loaded Scheinbaum onto a gurney and got him into the emergency room. Hospital records show they started lifesaving efforts at 11:12 p.m. — 22 minutes after the doctor wrote “Bring back now” on the EKG record and 42 minutes after hospital officials estimate he arrived.
With efforts to save him with drugs and CPR failing, Linda — now joined by Wendy Cannon — was called to Morton’s bedside to say goodbye. She said he turned his head toward her.
“You can let go, it’s OK,” Linda recalls saying. “You’re tired of the struggle. You held on as long as you could.”
He was pronounced dead at midnight.
As Linda Scheinbaum and her daughter staggered in shock from the facility, they were approached by a woman who said she had witnessed how they were treated. The woman was joined by others who said they also would be witnesses in case there was ever a lawsuit against MountainView.
Margo Williams, one of the witnesses, wrote in her affidavit: “After being in the emergency room area for approximately an hour to an hour and 15 minutes, Mr. Scheinbaum collapsed, and Mrs. Scheinbaum was screaming for help. I, along with many others in the waiting room, was shocked by the apparent lack of concern by hospital staff for Mr. Scheinbaum’s insistent complaints about chest pain and a possible heart attack.”
Another witness, Anita Troy, said she was “shocked by the nasty, nonchalant and uncaring attitude of the hospital staff. Mrs. Scheinbaum repeatedly told them of her husband’s heart problems, and pleaded for help. However, it appeared that the staff did not care.”
MacGregor, the cardiologist serving as an expert witness for the family, said in a deposition that hospital employees should have skipped the EKG and immediately taken Scheinbaum into the emergency room. The patient had a history of heart problems and a recent heart attack, and was suffering from “classic symptoms of cardiac instability,” MacGregor said.
“So I think it would have to be extraordinary — you know, like a bomb going off in the emergency room — to mitigate not bringing such a patient back right away and getting them medically seen and stabilized,” MacGregor said.
Physicians who reviewed the case for the defense say the hospital employees did everything they could to save Scheinbaum’s life.
The Scheinbaum family learned later that four of the emergency room’s 22 beds were free that night, but the hospital had chosen not to use them.
“Based on the anticipated census it was predicted that 18 rooms would be sufficient to handle the anticipated load that evening,” the hospital’s attorneys wrote.
In addition, hospital records show that some of the 18 beds might have been occupied by patients whose conditions were not as critical as Morton Scheinbaum’s. One patient, for example, was suffering from acute abdominal pain caused by constipation.
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