Elderly bleeding man denied medical treatment

A 77-year-old man bleeding from his head was turned away from an emergency treatment centre in Kalundborg for not calling ahead, P4 Sjælland reported.

 

Palle Schjøtts fell while out walking and struck his head on the asphalt. His fellow did what seemed to be the sensible thing and drove him straight to a new medical centre in nearby Kalundborg. 

 

Upon arrival, Schjøtts did not receive the reception he was expecting.

 

“I thought the new emergency treatment centre worked the same way as the emergency room at our hospital, which is now closed down. But I met three women at the reception who didn’t want anything to do with me, even though I was bleeding from my head,” he told P4 Sjælland.

 

Instead of treatment, he was handed a phone and told to call the acute telephone line, which in turn advised him to go to a hospital. This was after he had waited an hour in the Kalundborg Akuthus waiting room and despite the fact that the facility has its own emergency clinic. The acute line operator said an ambulance would come pick him up, but when Schjøtts couldn’t provide Kalundborg Akuthus’s address as the operator required, he lost his patience with the situation.

 

Ultimately, one of Schjøtts’s friends picked him up from the waiting room and drove him to his regular doctor. 

 

See also: Hospitals tell new mums to bring their own food and diapers

 

The government announced new acute phone lines in 2012. The rules require people needing emergency medical treatment to call the acute line to have their condition assessed rather than going directly to hospital for treatment. 

 

Schjøtts’s unpleasant run-in with the new acute line rules was roundly criticised by Anders Samuelsen of the libertarian party Liberal Alliance.

 

“Absurd way to treat residents. It sounds like satire,” Anders Samuelsen of Liberal Alliance wrote on Facebook.