[richlevy]

Remember this one? I'm still appalled. I don't think I've heard a horror story about UK healthcare that matches this one.

Edith Isabel Rodriguez, 43, died of a perforated bowel on May 9 at Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital. Her death was ruled accidental by the Los Angeles County coroner's office.Relatives said she was bleeding from the mouth and writhing in pain for 45 minutes. Experts have said Rodriguez could have survived had she been treated early enough. The head of the county's Department of Health Services, which oversees the facility, has called her death "inexcusable."

County officials said Rodriguez's last minutes were caught on tape by a hospital security camera, but officials are refusing to release that video."A dozen people were in the room and nobody got up to help. The janitors came over to help clean the vomit of the victim. They did a diligent job cleaning up the vomit, but they didn't take one look at her. It's a complete moral human breakdown that I cannot understand," said L.A. County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky.On Tuesday, the Los Angeles Times' Web site posted audio from two 911 calls that were released by the county Sheriff's Department under the newspaper's California Public Records Act request.In them, callers pleaded for help but were referred to hospital staff instead.A call to a sheriff's spokesman seeking comment was not immediately returned Tuesday.Rodriguez's boyfriend, Jose Prado, used a pay phone outside the hospital to call 911 at 1:43 a.m.