What. The. FUCK. This is WAY wrong. Someone at Sutter overstepped their authority in a major way. This is some scary shit. I am SO glad I don't have small kids anymore. I fear for those who do. Granted, this may be an "isolated incident" but how many times has this happened that we DON'T hear about.

And meanwhile, there are countless children who are being abused and NO ONE steps in to help, because no one reports it.

It has been my experience that some medical personnel are so convinced of their own omnipotence, that going against their immediate advice is tantamount to heresy, or criminal stupidity.
Several of my family members and acquaintances have been stampeded into risky surgery when there were other treatments, (or at least time to wait and see how the condition developed)

Would I be a complete cynic to note that the haste of a surgeon to intervene seems directly related to how good, your insurance policy, and credit rating are. In some states, depending on how they fund Medicaid, even those patients can be a lucrative source of revenue. Just a medical form of regulatory capture.

If you can get the authorities a reason to kidnap your customers for you,so much the better.

Tar, feathers.

Repeat as needed.

Luckily, this'll be an isolated event.

After the ACA, every opinion will be the same!

Problem solved!

Underlying this, it sounds like there was a grudge by a health care worker who didn't like that his or her advice wasn't followed or care was disparaged, who then called Child Protective Services.

I've seen the same behavior from CPS before. There was a case a few years ago where a CPS placement was abused and killed by the foster parents. CPS couldn't talk about the case. Meanwhile the CPS was having their annual foster a kid promotion where you could see the a picture of the kid and simple profile of the kids awaiting adoption.

I also have to wonder what forms they were required to sign when they first brought the baby to the hospital.

A few of the comments at the KSL link bring up the fact that hospitals have a ton of paperwork to sign when you first show up, and few people bother to read it all before signing.

At my regular doctor's office, I was asked to sign a notice, that would be put in my file, and the notice essentially said that I would consent to any treatment recommended. There was nothing in the notice that said I had the right to refuse treatment, or to seek a second opinion. I refused to sign, explained why, and luckily, that was that. I had to put a different note in my file explaining why I didn't sign.

But I wonder if this couple, trusting in the hospital, signed something similar, and that is where whoever reported them got the "authority" to say that the baby was in danger.

The GMA link also states that they are suing, but isn't really clear on who. The video says that CPS can use warrant-less entry in an emergency, but how are police not held to a higher standard? Can any CPS worker declare a situation an emergency, and then get police force to break in to a private home in order to take a child?
I'm not stupid enough to answer the door with a gun in my hands, but I understand the impulse, and the individual officers would be on my list of those getting sued, for not doing their own due diligence, and making sure there was an actual emergency before physically assaulting myself or my husband to gain entry to our home, as the couple claim happened.

Jazzhands:

I'm going to be lazy and not google. So from my-head-wiki... Nope.

NC case, 3 year old ran out of the house naked, Children's services showed up, forced into the house for child welfare, everybody arrested, kids put into the system "to protect them"...

Parents sued, and IIRC, it got to the USSC who said "It's for the chilllllrrrrruunnnn" and denied based on the fact that the workers showing up (no police until later, IIRC), had no warrant, and they were responding to an vague anonymous call.

(OK, it was bugging me, so I've been trying to Google it, and the tin cans and skwirrels are letting me down, but I did find references to it - 1999, Jonie Stumbo was the kid.)

Ok, Finally did get something to load - apparently the NC Supreme Court finally supported the Stumbos in the end.

But the 4-judge opinion specifically dodged the 4th Amendment issues - which during testimony the Social Worker had indicated she'd had no 4th Amendment training, and had been told that she _must_ investigate inside the house for any report - and the department repeatedly said in legal pleadings that the workers "weren't state actors" subject to the 4TH.

There was a 3-judge concurrence that did bring up the 4th, and specifically said that social services were state actors.

http://info.dhhs.state.nc.us/olm/manuals/dss/csm-05/man/0603adminletter.htm

DHHS seemed to be rather... pointedly pissy about that ruling.

FARK has an update. The parents have the kid back - well, sort of. The Judge ordered the kid into a 3rd hospital, and must stay there until that set of doctors says otherwise whereupon parents can get it back.

I have never not gotten a second, sometimes 3rd and 4th, opinion. Sometimes even for sore throats. It may seem like overkill, but I've been on te receiving end of medical judgement errors often enough to want confirmation. It's freaky how often 3 different Drs will have 3 different diagnosises.

If you look at the details -- the hospital they were in wanted to do open heart surgery on the child. In addition the nurse came in and was giving the child antibiotics when the doctor had advised against it.

How urgent was this surgery? If it was something that couldn't wait long enough to get a second opinion, then perhaps the doctor was justified.

But that would make the parents idiots. Of course, it could just as well be the doctor overreacting, like the story implies.

The most disturbing to me was the last statement - "a judge ruled ... that the parents had to agree to not take the child out of the hospital against doctors orders."

Effectively now saying that if they take their child to a hospital, any hospital, for no matter what reason, they cannot leave with the child.

awesome.

How urgent was this surgery? If it was something that couldn't wait long enough to get a second opinion, then perhaps the doctor was justified. -- Patrick at May 4, 2013 8:43 PM

The second hospital said the child didn't need surgery.

The third hospital isn't recommending surgery either.

I would bet a serious amount of money that this poor traumatized family has been snookered into taking Medicaid or CHIP, or at least that the original hospital deals primarily with Medicaid patients. This smacks strongly of a common strategy with Medicaid-only or Medicaid-mostly dental clinics (though of course applying that model to heart surgery is an even worse level of evil). It is wickedly.common for the creeps who run the wretched dental clinics to tell parents their kids need extractions, root canals, IV antibiotics, TODAY, and threaten to call CPS, or to havs their Medicaid revoked, if they leave the clinic with all their kid's teeth. They are bold enough to do this to these patients because they know that few of their competitors will examine the kid for what Medicaid pays, and because people who have been reduced to having the gov. pay for their care rarely have the inclination or the courage to really question.

Of course, the original hospital and doctor could simply be wrong and convinced otherwise. I can't decide if that's better or worse than above. But the unnecessary ICU stay, automatic antibiotics, and general attitude strike me as a gov. medical provider attempting to make up for gov.'s idiotic pay rates by increasing volume.

Some doctors are really over the top. I had one give me treatment without my consent. When I protested, he referred back to my level of education and said that I would not understand the treatment well enough to make a decision anyway. If the parents receive benefits, I am sure this type of attitude is even more pronounced.

I took my son in for breathing trouble when he was three. The doctor asked if we smoked. No we didn't. Then he asked if we had any relatives that smoked. Thankfully, no. Finally, he told me that if I ever let him be around anyone that smokes, he would charge me with child abuse and have him taken away. What? Did he mean that I could not take him to a birthday party, the library, a museum, an amusement park, or any other public place because there might be a smoker there?

Some doctors seem to think that they are God and can play with the lives of others.

I'm still angry when I think about my father's urologist.

He made me feel like a dirtbag because I didn't want to subject an 89-year-old man to shots that would kill his remaining testosterone in order to battle a very slow-moving prostate cancer. Never mind that Dad also had a heart condition and Alzheimer's, a catheter to deal with blood clots in his bladder and a colostomy bag from intestinal surgery. He went behind my back to my sister to arrange for the treatment. Dad died of another bowel obstruction before he ever got his first shot, which was probably for the best.

The fact of the matter is, medicine is more art than science. You get a bunch of vague symptoms (because even something rather well-defined, like a heart attack, has wide ranging symptoms... and people describe them differently, and many of them can be more than one thing.

Then you get folks who were trained at different times. One doc says green snot is a sinus infection, another says color doesn't indicate anything... who do I believe???

If you have a problem & go to an ENT, they'll likely find an ENT cause if one is possible. If you go to a GT, they'll find a GT cause, etc. This is because that's what they're trained for & see the most. Primary care doctors have their own minor biases, but none of the specialization, so they might get you to the right specialist, who will give you a completely different diagnosis.

I will add one last thing. Even things that are CLEAR CUT by diagnostic criteria, aren't clinically. E.g. there is a (somewhat arbitrary, just like everything) definition of gestational diabetes that basically says, if 2 or more of 4 blood glucose levels are above the "proper" numbers, you have gestational diabetes. You could be 2 million over or 1 over. You could be 2 million over one number and just below the other 3 and considered to NOT have it. These can be wrong. I "failed" by two points in my first pregnancy & had to test my blood sugar 3 times daily (it did become problematic the last couple weeks, but was otherwise fine). I passed with my 2nd pregnancy and when I had a 10+ pound baby, was told that's an after-the-fact confirmation of untreated gestational diabetes.

So, there's an art to this. Medicine is not as clear-cut as we'd tend to think, outside a few simple things like antibody-specific tests. With pediatrics it is worse because for anything remotely serious, there are both short-term and long-term impacts as they relate to development. Obviously, you'd take care of a broken bone, but if you get into surgery, most anyone should get a second opinion... even if both say surgery, they might have different scopes, approaches, or even different surgeries in mind!

"and because people who have been reduced to having the gov. pay for their care rarely have the inclination or the courage to really question. "

Everyone note the point Jenny makes here: When the government is paying for your ass, the government owns your ass.

Shannon, I too have been diagnosed with gestational diabetes. I failed the one hour test by 3 points my first pregnancy (I had 133 and the cutoff was 130). I was sent for the 3-hour test and you had to be fasting for it. I wasn't allowed to do the test because I failed my fasting by 1 point (95 is the cutoff and I was 96). I had to start monitoring my blood sugars fasting and after meals. I was always below the cutoff 120 number at the 2-hour mark like I was supposed to on my normal diet. My second pregnancy I passed my glucose tests but had to test my blood sugar anyway. They were perfectly fine until 32 weeks where literally they were perfect and the next day I couldn't keep below 180 and ended up on insulin. My pancreas just completely quit on me. So far this pregnancy my numbers have been excellent in the 70-90 range, but I'm only 22 weeks so that could very well change. I at least have a good doctor who doesn't think the glucose test is a good option for me with his thoughts being that because I eat a very low carb, low sugar diet my body doesn't know how to respond when that much sugar is dumped into my system so instead he just has me monitor my levels starting at 18 weeks.

And I do agree, so many things have similar symptoms so it takes a lot of questions and workups to narrow down what the problem is. There then end up being multiple ways to treat the problem. I do have a hard time imagining symptoms that would cause one doctor to want to perform heart surgery immediately while others didn't think it was needed at all. I'm sure there is a lot more to the story we're not hearing.

I think most doctors are reluctant to overrule another physicians decision.

The doctor who wants the most aggressive treatment of any condition will usually be the one who gets their way because it is the easier call to make, and the one you are least likely to get sued for.

I fought this battle with my 85 year old mother. The doctors wanted to do surgery immediately followed by aggressive chemo therapy for a large cancerous tumor that had actually broken through the wall of her stomach, and was wrapping itself around her pancreas.

She and I both drug our feet until we could get a few more diagnostic tests, and a second opinion.

We finally ended up getting her the surgery ( very hard on someone that old) but skipped the chemo therapy as research indicated that the down side was considerably more risky than the upside.
I have the force of personality to not be intimidated by someone insisting they know better than I but the oncologist snuck into her room when she was still very ill and tried to talk her into it.
Two years later, there is no sign of any regrowth of the cancerous tumor.