Dying COVID-19 patient moved from Wayne to Grosse Pointe, family wants to know why
FOX 2 - A metro Detroit family wants answers after learning a loved one hospitalized and dying from COVID-19 is set to be moved to another facility.
"We don’t think it’s very ethical to be doing that - to be transferring a dying person out to a different city - during this pandemic," said the patient's granddaughter.
The woman, who wished to remain anonymous, says her grandfather is at the Wayne Beaumont hospital. Nurses informed her family that he was dying from the novel coronavirus.
"Yesterday we got the news that they have a day to live. Today we got the news that they’re transferring my family member," she said.
The health system transferred him to Beaumont Grosse Pointe, about 30 miles away. Most of the family lives near the hospital in Wayne.
"Keeping someone comfortable in hospice care, I don’t think that involves putting them in an ambulance and transferring them somewhere. That doesn’t sound very comfortable to me," she said. "We just want our family member to comfortable, we don’t want this to be a crazy process."
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Beaumont Health System began moving patients to the hospital in Wayne about three weeks ago as part of its surge plan.
The emergency department was shut down and transformed into an Intensive Care Unit overflow to accommodate a portion of the growing number of COVID-19 patients the health system was treating.
Last Friday Beaumont announced the curve of coronavirus patients was diminishing and it was ending its surge plan at Wayne and would begin transferring the remaining patients.
It appears a dying man is one of them.
"We’re just wondering why that’s happening," she said. "It seems like a bunch of chaos right now and it’s not in the best interest of the patients."
FOX 2 reached out to Beaumont for comment and the health system said this:
"COVID-19 is hitting southeastern Michigan particularly hard. As community’s members turn to Beaumont for care during this extraordinary time, we are doing all we can to evaluate, triage and care for patients to the best of our ability."