Mychelle Williams, 18 months old, died of a treatable infection that a simple blood test would have detected--a victim both of malpractice and patient dumping, a Compton jury decided.
The jury awarded Mychelle's single mother $1.35 million in damages for pain and suffering and $3,000 in economic compensation to cover the cost of Mychelle's funeral and burial. The trial judge--believing she was bound by the state's 24-year-old medical malpractice law--then slashed the award for pain and suffering to $250,000, the maximum the law allows.
Now, more than five years after her death, Mychelle's case is before the California Supreme Court, which will soon decide whether a hospital that violates the federal law against patient dumping should lose its protection against high malpractice awards.
The facts in Mychelle's case are harrowing: An ambulance picked the little girl up from her grandmother's Compton home in May 1993 and took her to Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center, the nearest hospital.
Dr. Trach Phoung Dang then gave Mychelle medication for her fever and other ailments and intravenous liquids for dehydration. He wanted to run blood tests to determine why the feverish, limp girl, who her mother said had been fine just hours earlier, was now so desperately ill. But the girl's family belonged to the Kaiser health maintenance organization, and Kaiser's Dr. Brian Thompson repeatedly told King/Drew that the tests should be done at Kaiser.
The telephone conversations between the doctors were tape-recorded by Kaiser, and according to a petition filed with the high court, Dang suggested three times that King do the tests before a transfer.
As the little girl's condition deteriorated, her mother, Dawnelle Keys, now 37, pleaded with doctors for more aggressive treatment. But the child could not be given antibiotics until after a blood test, and wasn't given the blood test because Kaiser wanted to do the tests.
After 2 1/2 hours at the hospital, the girl suffered a seizure. The hospital's response to her mother's panicky demands for help was to summon security guards to escort her out of the building. Mychelle's grandmother was permitted to remain.
By the time the toddler reached Kaiser--four hours after she arrived at King--she was near death. Her heart stopped about 20 minutes later, and she could not be revived.
