Complaint Review: Methodist Hospital of Chicago

The Methodist Hospital of Chicago provides medical in-patient and out-patient services to the community for a fee.  The hospital is owned by the Bethany Methodist Corporation and the United Methodist Church in Illinois, a tax exempt, 501(c) organization.   

This hospital was reported to and inspected by the Illinois Dept. of Public Health years ago and was fined for violations, for inadequate fire extinguishers,fire alarms not working, and violations of local and national fire safety codes.

In-spite of the hospital's gross negligence for failure to operate a safe hospital, the state of Illinois took no action to stop them from receiving healthcare payments for services rendered to Medicaid and Medicare recipients.  

Several years ago back on April 6, 2001, Joyce Richardson, was admitted onto the hospital's general medical floor, room 305, confined to her bed as the doctor ordered. Two days later on April 8, 2001 a nurse's assistant reported that she saw lighting coming from the room as she ran towards the room. 

The nurse assistant found her patient buring and went to get a fire extinguisher to put the fire on the patient and materials buring in the room. The hospital staff was told to call 911, because the hospital was not in a tie-in to the fire department.

The fire department did not recive a fire alarm therefore, the media did not get a fire signal to go to the hospital to report the hospital fire to the public.  Therefore, the hospital was able to escape exposure form the media.

Joyce Richardson was transfered to the county hospital's burn center for burn care.  They reported that she sustained second and third degree burns to 70% of her body.  She died later that night on April 8, 2001.

The city police bomb and arson were called to investigate the hospital fire.  They reported that when they arrived on the scene, room 305 had been cleaned and the bed removed from the room. They knew this was evidence tampering, yet closed the case accidential. 

Inspite of the nurse aid's story of seeing lighting coming from room 305. the healthcare staff conspired to cover-up the cause of the fire.  They destroyed material evidence, which is a crime. They concocked a story alleging the patient was smoking cigarret butts and droped it on her gown thus catching herself on fire. 

Rev Dr. Stepehen A. Dahl, Pres/CEO, was made aware of the event thus being resonsible for the faulty condition of the hospital. He should be charged with criminal negligence, with other healthcare staff who destroyed fire evidence. He is responsible for the hospital's safe operations, yet failed to protect hospital patient from fire risk. 

To this day Rev Dr. Stephen A. Dahl, has not seen to it that general liability claims were paid by their insurer(s) and Self Insured Trust to the survivors of Joyce Richardson. However, he made sure that their attorneys got paid thousands of dollars to intimidate her family. 

It's is irronic that the Chicago media did not cover the hospital fire that April 8, 2001, however, they cetainly cover residential fires that are not on tie in to fire dept. I have two words for this, COVER-UP! Most know that even a homeowner would be liable for burn injuries to their visitors,especially if the property has faulty materials that causes a fire.