Staff who attended to Chicago mother discharged before giving birth in car fired: hospital
The doctor and nurse who cared for a Chicago mother who was discharged from a northwest Indiana hospital shortly before giving birth earlier this week are no longer at that hospital, the president and CEO of Franciscan Health Crown Point said Friday.
Mercedes Wells said she knew something was wrong when she went to the hospital to give birth and they wouldn’t put her in the delivery room.
Instead, Wells, 38, says she spent six hours there until she had just a minute between contractions. The nurse told him to go home. She gave birth in her car eight minutes after being forced to leave.
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Franciscan Health Crown Point President and CEO Raymond Grady said Friday that in addition to laying off hospital employees, cultural competency training is being mandated for all labor and obstetric staff.
He said all pregnant patients leaving the labor and delivery unit will be examined by a doctor before leaving the hospital.
“On behalf of the Franciscan Alliance and Franciscan Health Crown Point, I apologize to Ms. Wells and her family for failing to live up to our Franciscan values. We are committed to holding ourselves accountable through our actions to ensure that every patient is heard and receives compassionate, equitable care. Any evidence of contrary actions will not be tolerated,” the statement said. “We have reached out to the family and I hope to meet them in person very soon.”
Baby Alena Wells is doing well, her mother said.
But Wells said she was still deeply troubled by having to give birth on the side of the road early Sunday morning after having to leave Franciscan Health in Crown Point, Indiana, earlier this week.
Wells is an experienced mother who has just given birth to her fourth child. She says she is in a lot of pain and knows the baby will come soon. But he says the nurse told him to leave.
“I was in excruciating pain. He saw me in pain and suffering, and I think he sensed that I wasn’t still in labor,” Wells said. “When he came back to the room he said: ‘If you’re not within an inch of each other then we have to send you home.'”
Wells’ mother shared the video she took of her daughter being taken out of the hospital under security escort.
Wells, who lives in Chicago, says she visited Indiana two weeks before her due date and felt it was time. They chose the nearest hospital. But when they dropped her off, her husband Leon was driving them to the nearest hospital in Munster when the baby started to be born.
“By the grace of God, I was scared. I didn’t know what to do. I don’t have a medical license or anything to have a baby,” she said.
Fortunately, things went well and baby Alena was born safely. But the couple and their lawyer, Cannon Lambert, say this is not the way it should be.
“We agree that a woman in active labor should not be sent away without seeing a doctor,” Lambert said.
At a press conference with their lawyers, the family said they were mistreated because of their race.
“My dignity was taken away. As a human being, I was treated as less than an animal,” Wells said.
Mercedes and Leon Wells say they are not considering legal action at this time.
