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El Camino Hospital has removed an emergency room physician working at its Los Gatos campus after a video surfaced showing her mistreating a patient suffering from a severe anxiety attack last week.
The cellphone video shows the physician, Dr. Beth Keegstra, berating the 20-year-old patient while he’s in a hospital bed and appearing to downplay his condition. The patient was rushed to the hospital after he collapsed during basketball practice on Monday, June 11, which the patient and his father believe was the result of a debilitating anxiety attack.
After waiting multiple hours for treatment, Keegstra reportedly showed up with a security guard in tow, and can be seen yanking the patient’s arm while ordering him to sit up. When the patient explains that he feels like he can’t inhale, Keegstra laughs.
“He must be dead,” Keegstra said in response. “Are you dead, sir?”
Keegstra also told the patient that the lengthy delay for care was due to his non-severe condition, and that he was the “least sick of all the people who are here who are dying” in the emergency room. The patient and his father told KPIX that they believe the doctor thought they were there for narcotics, and at one point during the interaction Keegstra asks point blank if that’s what they were after.
“So you need narcotics, is that what you need?” Keegstra asks.
A spokesperson from El Camino Hospital released a statement shortly after the incident that hospital officials are “saddened and disappointed” by the unprofessional conduct shown in the video, and that Keegstra has since been removed from the ER schedule. The hospital is currently conducting an internal investigation into the incident.
In a subsequent statement, hospital CEO Dan Woods said Keegstra’s actions were “unprofessional and not the standard we require of all who provide care through El Camino Hospital.” El Camino’s contracted provider for emergency services, Vituity, has since been notified to “permanently remove” the physician from the list of approved doctors assigned for El Camino’s two hospital campuses.
Although the investigation is underway, many of the details of the interaction are subject to patient privacy laws and will not be released, Woods said.
“This matter is being immediately addressed at the highest level of our organization; however, patient privacy laws prevent us from providing specific information regarding the treatment or services provided to any patient under our care,” Woods said in the statement.
So sad that someone in the medical field is able to perform treatment to anyone in medical need. she should never have been able to obtain a medical lic.
If you’ve ever had a panic attack, you would know what its like. Its horrible. Withdrawal is horrible also. No matter that he let his prescription lapse. Poor guy, he probably doesn’t want to be on “dangerous drugs.” There is nothing worse than when the person taking care of you is mean. It adds a whole new level or horror. When a person is going through something like that, it is not the right time to be making a point. He will remember.
Keegstra needs heaping helping of compassion. It would be interesting to learn what her background is like. Has she always been so perfect, being a doctor and all?
Wow this behavior is despicable. The physician openly admits on video that she made him wait as long as he did because he was not severe, how did she even know if she didn’t examine him. I regardless, if the poor guy had stopped taking his meds, that is no reason for her to react the way she did to him. She should not be allowed to be at any hospital. She had a very bad day and treated this patient HORRIBLY! It’s just not right.
I wonder how many other ER patients this physician has mistreated without being filmed and/or reported. If El Camino Hospital is going to use contract physicians for its ERs, it should be especially careful to monitor the quality of their care. Patients go to an El Camino ER believing they will receive El Camino physician level care for their problems. I would hold El Camino as well as the physician responsible for this debacle. El Camino should be more attentive to quality assurance if it is going to staff its ERs with contract rather than El Camino physicians.
While the crowd, going on the limited information available from this article, gathers pitchforks and cries out for blood (one, for example, suggesting to drop the physician from an airplane), a more temperate voice had posted a comment claiming further knowledge of the case, and that it was much more complex than the article implies. That comment, even to its utterly unexceptionable and moderate aspects, is now gone without trace or explanation. I’ve read the Voice website for many years, and seen comments deleted occasionally for disclosing things like substantive personal information not in the article, but the comment struck me as within typical editorial guidelines applied here. Its deletion very unfortunately removed the only perspective up to this point not based on very limited info, nor howling for blood.
No question, this doctor’s behavior comes across as unprofessional and unsympathetic. I know nothing against the patient. But readers might keep in mind (for a change) that:
– You don’t have the complete story at all, just the narrative the complainants took to the media. You didn’t see what isn’t on the released cellphone video segment, and you don’t know everything that went into the doctor’s attitude toward this ER patient.
– The flip side: Hospital physicians today deal constantly with patients who are dishonest with them, have underhanded agendas (especially but not exclusively seeking drugs), and play various other obnoxious games that jerk the health-care professionals around. I’ve heard countless actual stories from friends who work in those jobs. If only those patients too were recorded on cellphone videos and splashed all over the news media by the people who have good reason to complain about their behavior — oh, but wait: they’re protected from exposure (by patient confidentiality rules and physician oaths), and they know it. So a report like the subject of this article will seldom be objective, or provide important context needed to accurately judge it.
Keep one thing in mind: due to patient privacy law a great deal of this story is private and so a great deal of assumption is being made by everyone here, including the reporting party, including myself. You are seeing the side of the story presented by the family and as the adage goes “there’s always two sides to a story”. The truth is likely somewhere in the middle.
As a healthcare provider who happens to work in an ER, I find the general manner in which this physician conducted herself to be inappropriate. At face value, she was blunt/rude with them and seemed to be venting her generation frustrations of the healthcare system and making a ton of assumptions. Not professional at all.
However a huge clue that A LOT happened “behind the scenes” is that a security guard comes into the room with the doctor. You don’t just do that, unless a patient or patient’s family has demonstrated behavior that indicates there could be a safety issue. Also, the video is ready and rolling as the doc walks into the room, again indicating that there previous issues before the doctor came in the room, the family ready and poised to film the second the doctor walks in. This is very suspicious behavior, if nothing else by the fact that it is illegal to film in patient care areas.
It really sucks that as healthcare providers we can’t just trust our patients. We are frequently finding patients who are abusing the healthcare system to obtain access to multiple narcotic prescriptions. Or failing to do “their part” and honor follow up appointments, maintain appropriate care, even get prescriptions filled. Its really hard to help people who won’t help themselves, or people who prefer to play the victim card. Not saying that that is what is going on here, but when I watch this video I just see the eruption of years and years of this ER doctor being ground down by a difficult healthcare system coming and it all coming to a head and unfortunately ending the career of a doctor, and giving these people a very bad patient care experience.