Part 4 of a Special Report Georgia’s Echols County, which borders Florida, could be called a health care desert. It has no hospital, no local ambulances. A medical provider comes to treat patients at a migrant farmworker clinic but, other than a small public health department with two full-time employees, that’s about the extent of…
Lacandie Gipson struggled to breathe. The 33-year-old woman with multiple health conditions was in respiratory distress and awaiting an ambulance. About 20 minutes after the emergency call, it arrived. The Cuthbert home where Gipson lived was less than a mile from Southwest Georgia Regional Medical Center, but the ambulance couldn’t take her to the one-story…
In September, when Shelly Azzopardi went to Wellstar Kennestone Hospital with abdominal pain, she didn’t worry about her insurance. Doctors said she had a case of appendicitis. But she also tested positive at the hospital in Marietta, Georgia, for Covid-19. Physicians decided not to do surgery and treated her with antibiotics and painkillers. Azzopardi, 47,…
By Katja Ridderbusch Every couple of weeks, police in Americus, a small city in southwest Georgia, respond to trouble at the home of the same young man. The man goes through psychotic episodes, sometimes violent ones. He’s on the autism spectrum and has been diagnosed with a brain tumor. The man got a lucky break…
Many patients dealing with mental health crises are having to wait several days in an ER until a bed becomes available at one of Georgia’s five state psychiatric hospitals, as public facilities nationwide feel the pinch of the pandemic.“We’re in crisis mode,’’ said Dr. John Sy, an emergency medicine physician in Savannah. “Two weeks ago,…
By Rebecca Grapevine Guitarist Chuck Beckman was inspired to pursue a career in live therapeutic music for hospital patients after he played at the bedside of a dying friend. His goal, he says, “was to play for patients in the last moments of their lives.” And he founded a program to do just that at Northeast…
By Bram Sable-Smith and Andy Miller The San Leandro Hospital emergency department, where nurse Mawata Kamara works, went into lockdown recently when a visitor, agitated about being barred from seeing a patient due to covid-19 restrictions, threatened to bring a gun to the California facility. It wasn’t the first time the department faced a gun…
By Katja Ridderbusch Sometimes, Pamela Winn isn’t sure how to connect with people, even those she loves, like her 9-month-old granddaughter. When the baby is in her arms, “I sit there quietly, and I don’t know what to say. What to do,” she said, her eyes filling with tears. “My socializing skills are just not…
By Andy Miller and Phil Galewitz Natalia D’Angelo got sick right after school started in August. She was driving a school bus for special education students in Griffin-Spalding County School System about 40 miles south of Atlanta and contracted Covid-19. One of her three sons, Julian Rodriguez-D’Angelo, said his mother, who was not vaccinated against…
By Rebecca Grapevine and Andy Miller Just before Frank Berry left his job as head of Georgia’s Medicaid agency this summer, he said the state “will be looking for the best bang for the buck” in its upcoming contract with private insurers to cover the state’s most vulnerable. But whether the state — and Medicaid…