Hello,
My cousin was taken to the hospital after coughing a lot for over 2 weeks with fever,chills, and problems breathing. She had no insurance. She was seen in the ER and given a chest xray. She was given a zpac and sent home with me and my family. 10 days later she went to another hospital and went to the ER. After receiving her xray results, the hospital immediately admitted her and told her that her 2nd lung was being covered with a mass. It was determined that she had active TB (she had to have had it for months!). She has exposed us all to the disease, we have to take medicine for 9 months. I called the first Hospital we took her to and spoke with the Head MD and the Risk Mgmnt person. They reviewed her medical records and the head MD admitted that her chest xray was abnormal and that she should have received more care and told me 'sorry' that there was nothing else he could do . The person in the risk mgmnt dept couldn't believe that the MD wasn't going to report this to their insurance company. My cousin is still in quarentine (since Aug 05) and we have to go to the doctor once a month for 9 months and also take and pay for the meds prescribed. Can the first hospital be held accountable? Why aren't they locking the doors and testing all staff who was in direct contact with her? If we would have been told that my cousin had TB, we wouldn't have continued to expose ourselves to her and probably wouldn't have to go through this. There have been 150+ people exposed to her because she didn't know and because the hospital didn't keep her.
Please help

