Valley Children’s Hospital sees more adult patients, at least two deaths since Madera closure
Nena Falcon never imagined her 81-year-old mother dying at a children’s hospital, or more specifically at Valley Children’s Hospital where her mother passed away in February.
Her mother, Eddie R. Suarez, collapsed on the morning of Feb. 22 after she was done serving meals at the Holy Family Table at St. Joachim Catholic Church in Madera, where Suarez and others went to help every morning.
As Falcon was rushing south on Highway 99 from Merced, she was told on the phone by a police officer who was on site that paramedics were still working on her mother. Paramedics had already shocked Suarez twice in an effort to restore her heartbeat.
The officer informed Falcon that if they were able to, they would transport her mother to Valley Children’s Hospital about 18 miles away. Falcon said she asked the officer why Valley Children’s Hospital? The officer responded by saying “because it was the closest receiving hospital.”
Suarez was eventually transported to Valley Children’s Hospital where she passed away.
“An 81-year-old woman really shouldn’t be dying at a children’s hospital,” Falcon told The Bee.
Since the closure of the only adult acute care hospital in Madera County — Madera Community Hospital — in January, Valley Children’s Hospital has seen an increase in adult patients at its emergency department. And Suarez is one of at least two adult patients who have died at the children’s hospital since the beginning of this year.
Those deaths are in addition to at least two other Madera patients who have died in emergency situations since the closure of the Madera hospital. One of them died while being transported to a hospital in Fresno, and another while waiting for an ambulance at a nursing home in Madera.
“This was predicted — that people would die when the hospital closed,” Falcon said.
Valley Children’s emergency department open to anyone
Zara Arboleda, a spokeswoman for Valley Children’s Hospital, said the hospital’s emergency department provides emergency pediatric and trauma care to infants, children and adolescents up to 21 years of age.
“But we have been seeing more patients 21 and up,” she told The Bee. “We’ve definitely seen an increase since December.”
According to statistics provided to The Bee by Arboleda, in December — before the closure of the Madera hospital — Valley Children’s Hospital saw a total of 29 patients who were 21 and older at its emergency department.
In January, the number of adult patients who showed up at Valley Children’s Hospital went up to 52. In February, the number was 59.
Before the month was over in March, the hospital had seen 67 adult patients as of March 29.
Arboleda said a federal law — the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, often referred to by its acronym EMTALA — requires any hospital emergency department to provide emergency services to anyone who shows up at their emergency room.
“All EDs must provide medical screening exams to rule out emergency medical conditions,” Arboleda said. “At Valley Children’s, if an adult comes to our ED, and they say they are there for an emergency medical condition, we do a medical screening exam...If that adult is found to have an emergency medical condition, then at Valley Children’s, they are stabilized and then transferred to an adult hospital.”
However, Arboleda said, Valley Children’s Hospital is the only pediatric trauma center in Central California.
“So our main focus is on providing care for kids,” she said. “But again, we will provide medical screening exams if an adult presents to our ED with an emergency medical condition, but of course, we tell everybody, if you are experiencing an emergency medical condition, you should call 911 immediately.”
Valley Children’s Hospital staff, Arboleda said, make sure they have the teams in place to continue to meet the needs of children at the hospital, but said she didn’t have information on the impact the increase in adult patients has created for medical staff and sick children.
Arboleda said the hospital wouldn’t comment on Suarez’s case, despite Falcon’s willingness to sign a consent form for the hospital to disclose medical information to The Bee about her mother’s case.
Falcon said her mother’s death certificate indicates Suarez had a heart attack. She said she doesn’t believe the outcome would have been different if the Madera hospital was open.
“But it would have definitely changed, like, the experience of it,” she said. “It would have made her passing a little less traumatic.”
Falcon said she has nothing against Valley Children’s Hospital, and she has no doubt doctors there did everything they could for her mother. But at the Madera hospital, where Falcon worked in the labor and delivery department, her family knew the staff and the staff knew her mother.
“To have her die at Children’s Hospital with strangers...just kind of left us kind of cold,” Falcon said. “Madera (Community) was family.”
The other known instance of an adult patient dying at Valley Children’s Hospital since the closure of Madera’s hospital happened in January. The adult patient had been involved in a car crash on Avenue 12 at Road 40, just west of Highway 41, and was in cardiac arrest when rushed to Valley Children’s Hospital minutes away, said Dan Lynch, director of the Central California Emergency Medical Services Agency.
How do ambulance crews decide when to take adults to Valley Children’s Hospital?
Lynch said when a patient is transported to a hospital by ambulance, it’s the patient’s choice of where they want to go.
“So, if it’s an adult patient, chances are they don’t pick Valley Children’s Hospital,” he said.
However, he said, there are two scenarios, from the ambulance standpoint, in which adult patients would be transported to the children’s hospital for treatment.
A patient in cardiac arrest where VCH is the closest hospital, such as the adult patient from the Avenue 12 car crash, is one scenario. The second scenario would be if there was an event where both a child and a parent needed hospital care.
“They (the ambulance) want to transport the child to Valley Children’s Hospital and they may transport mom or dad with them...They call ahead to Valley Children’s and say, ‘We have a child that’s been injured but we have the adult mom or dad with them, can you treat them, as well?’” Lynch said. “And then they take them both, which makes a lot of sense, that way they are not separating mom or dad from the child.”
Those are the only two scenarios, he said, in which an ambulance would transport adult patients to Valley Children’s Hospital.
Lynch said from an ambulance standpoint, he’s not seeing an increase in adult patients being transported to the children’s hospital. But he said he wouldn’t know the number of adult patients who are walk-ins or those transported in private vehicles. The hospital doesn’t report that data to his agency.
“But still, the question is, is it a concern? Well, yeah. There’s an educational issue out there obviously where people probably need to be educated on the appropriate hospital to go to,” he said.
But on the other hand, Lynch said, Valley Children’s Hospital has a full-service emergency department, and just like any other hospital in California, it has to treat all who need help.
“But we also realize they really focus on children and they do an awesome, an excellent job treating children, there’s no question about that, and I prefer that adults don’t go to Children’s so that they can continue to focus on children and not adults,” he said.
Saint Agnes seeing more Madera patients since hospital closure
The next closest hospitals to Madera are Saint Agnes Medical Center and Community Regional Medical Center.
Community Health System (CHS), formerly known as Community Medical Centers, owns CRMC. CHS didn’t respond to multiple inquiries by The Bee seeking comment for this story.
Kelley Sanchez, a spokeswoman for Saint Agnes, provided monthly data to The Bee on the number of Madera patients going to their emergency department, starting in January when the Madera hospital closed.
In January, Saint Agnes saw 996 patients from Madera, with 28% of them being transported by ambulance. In February, the hospital saw 894 patients from Madera, with 29% of them being transported by ambulance. In March, the hospital saw 1,028 patients from Madera, with 32% of them being transported by ambulance.
In comparison, in the months prior to January and starting with July 2022, the number of patients from Madera that Saint Agnes saw ranged from a low of 479 to a high of 556.
Lynch’s agency only tracks transports by ambulance, and from that standpoint, he said the numbers haven’t changed significantly since January. He said his data shows an average of five to six ambulance transports with Madera patients to CRMC and Saint Agnes per day. However, he said, more patients are now starting to go to the hospital in Merced, as well.
Ambulance response times in the Madera area, remain at around 9 minutes, he said.
“The impact has turned out to be much less than we thought it could potentially be,” he said.
This story was originally published April 8, 2023 at 5:30 AM.
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