The lawsuit and call for a criminal investigation announced today by the family of Esmin Green have been expected given the 49-year-old Brooklyn woman’s shameful death last month on the floor of Kings County Hospital’s psychiatric emergency room, said advocates who filed a major civil rights lawsuit against the hospital last year. They also renewed their call for an overhaul of the entire hospital system, and warned that scapegoating low-level hospital employees does not ensure an end to an ingrained culture of abuse.

“The crass indifference displayed by hospital personnel and the abysmal lack of care and treatment Ms. Green received in the last hours of her life are an affront to human dignity,” said Donna Lieberman, NYCLU executive director. “But also shocking is that there are thousands of New Yorkers who have been, and are still, subject to deplorable treatment at Kings County Hospital’s psychiatric facilities. We are committed to transforming the tragedy of Ms. Green’s death into a catalyst for long overdue reform.”

Green died in the early morning on June 19. Disturbing security videos show three employees ignoring the woman’s convulsing body, walking past her as she lay face down and dying for more than an hour. Further, hospital medical records misrepresent her condition in a way that suggests they have been altered or not maintained with the integrity the law requires.

The hospital is the subject of a lawsuit filed in May 2007 by the New York Civil Liberties Union, Mental Hygiene Legal Service, and Kirkland & Ellis LLP. The lawsuit describes the hospital’s psychiatric emergency room and inpatient unit as “a chamber of filth, decay, indifference and danger,” and seeks an end to abusive treatment in the hospital’s psychiatric facilities where patients are regularly ignored and those that dare advocate for themselves are punished with forcible injections of psychotropic drugs.

“It is a culture of indifference that extends from the lowest level employees to the highest levels of the Health and Hospitals Corporation that contributed to Ms. Green’s death,” said Rob Cohen, a partner at Kirkland & Ellis. “We fully support efforts to punish those individuals who were directly involved. Our mission, though, is far broader. We are seeking fundamental change to the system at Kings County Hospital that allowed Esmin Green to die.”

After more than a year of litigation and the death of the Brooklyn woman, New York City finally agreed in court last week to a series of stop gap measures at the hospital intended to prevent another death. Among those measures are:

  • That every patient be checked every 15 minutes.
  • That there be no more than 25 patients at any time in the psychiatric emergency ward.
  • That detailed records on the ward be turned over every week to the advocates involved in the lawsuit.
  • And that the advocates be active participants in the search for a new deputy executive director and emergency room director for Kings County Hospital’s Behavioral Health department.

“We will be watching the city carefully this next week to see if the hospital is complying with the order of the court,” said Dennis Feld, the deputy director of special litigation and appeals with Mental Hygiene Legal Service, the on-the-ground advocate for patients in the system. “Given Kings County Hospital’s track record, it’s hard to see that they will comply. But we hope they will and we will be ready to respond no matter what.”

The city has yet to address larger issues, including environment of care, abuse and restraint at the hands of staff (including hospital police) and discharge planning.

“As Kings County Hospital prepares to move into a new facility in the next few months, the city has a unique opportunity to leave behind not only the old space, but also the old disastrous culture of abuse and neglect that permeated the psychiatric facilities,” said Beth Haroules, the NYCLU’s lead counsel on the case. “Our hope is that they do just that.”