Attorneys around the country report an alarming uptick in calls for help from families of patients hospitalized with COVID-19.
Some say they’ve talked to family members who were arrested after trying to visit a loved one or to speak with a doctor after communications with the hospital were cut off.
Attorneys told The Epoch Times about a wide variety of instances of what they call abuse, including hospitals preventing visits from family, failing to provide nutrition and fluids, and coercing patients to agree to treatments they’d already refused multiple times—such as being placed on a ventilator.
Gainesville, Florida, attorney Jeff Childers has been so alarmed by the cases he’s seen, he posted a tutorial online with tips on how to navigate the legalities surrounding hospitalization with COVID-19.
Childers warns that he’s not a doctor and that he’s not offering medical advice.
When his office gets calls from concerned family members, the patient in question is already on a ventilator and the family is desperately concerned about treatment.
“In many cases, the hospitals have refused to release the patient, citing their unstable condition, meaning that at some point it can become impossible to get off the COVID express,” Childers wrote in his blog.
“The most common complaints we get include that patients are being pressured to accept Remdesivir, have been given Remdesivir even though they objected to it, or the hospital will not administer alternative widely-used treatments even though the patient is in critical condition where side effects are less risky than imminent death.
I have personally seen hospitals spend tens of thousands of dollars on lawyers to keep patients in their facility.”
Attorneys for the family of Daniel Pisano (shown here with his wife of 51 years, Claudia) had filed a lawsuit asking a judge to order Mayo Clinic to allow treatment with ivermectin and other vitamins and medications. (Courtesy of Chris Pisano)
Childers was one of the attorneys who took on Mayo Clinic Florida in court hoping to help the family of Daniel Pisano try medications they believed would help him. Mayo Clinic attorneys fought back vigorously.
The Pisano family also had tried to arrange to transfer the 70-year-old grandfather and businessman to a hospital where he could receive the medications an outside doctor had said could save him.
Pisano passed while the family was still fighting to obtain alternative medications for him.
“I call it medical kidnapping,” Childers said. “This isn’t over by a long shot,” he added, alluding to a continuation of the fight with Mayo Clinic.
Mayo Clinic Florida has not responded to repeated requests for comment on the case and hospital attorneys asked judges on multiple occasions to seal documents that would reveal their…
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