A Black woman and her husband are suing a hospital run by Emory University in Atlanta for medical malpractice, claiming she was denied emergency care there for two hours, leading to the death of her unborn son.
Atlanta residents Crystal Bealing and Joshua McCreary filed a lawsuit in Fulton County State Court on Aug. 22, claiming gross negligence by doctors, nurses, and other staff of Emory University Hospital Midtown, who they say ignored the severe medical crisis that the 38-weeks-pregnant Bealing was experiencing when she staggered into their emergency room two years ago.
According to her complaint, Bealing felt sharp contractions and severe pain while showering in her home around 8 p.m. on Aug. 22, 2022, and crawled out of the bathroom, unable to walk upright. Soon she was bleeding from her vaginal area and having trouble breathing, and McCreary drove her to Emory University Midtown Hospital, arriving at about 9:30 p.m.
The lawsuit alleges that the couple informed at least five employees in the ER of her condition, which included severe pain in her stomach area, heavy vaginal bleeding and nausea, and requested immediate medical attention. The hospital staff then ignored her for 20 minutes until Bealing was asked to complete intake forms, which were signed at 10:02 p.m.
Bealing endured “immense pain” and stress as she waited, and twice vomited “in full view of” hospital staff, who continued to provide no care, she claims. She was then taken to the maternity emergency waiting room in a wheelchair and “placed along a hallway against a wall,” where a hospital employee told her she had not yet been treated because a shift change was about to take place and no beds were available.
She observed a new group of three or four employees take their positions in the maternity ER waiting room, who “failed to offer any treatment, examination, aid or evaluation” to her. One employee ate a meal, and when she again asked when she would get medical attention, another said dismissively, “Someone has already talked to you about that.”
While the hospital staff continued to ignore her, Bealing noticed that her unborn son’s previously vigorous kicking “became less frantic and soon stopped altogether.” Alarmed by that and still bleeding and in pain, “it was clear that Defendants had no intention of examining or treating her,” and Bealing asked her husband to take her to another hospital, their complaint states.
The couple left Emory Midtown Hospital at 11:32 p.m. and arrived 10 minutes later at Piedmont Hospital. They said no one at Emory made an effort to speak with Bealing as she left or to refer her to another emergency treatment facility.
Unlike the treatment she received at Emory, the staff at Piedmont Hospital snapped into action, she alleges.
“Upon learning Mrs. Bealing was pregnant and had vaginal bleeding,” they put her in a wheelchair and rushed her to the maternity emergency unit, where “at least five doctors assembled around Mrs. Bealing and immediately triaged, admitted and began to treat” her, starting an ultrasound by 11:52 p.m.
Despite the best efforts of the medical staff, the lawsuit says, in the early hours of Aug. 23, a physician told Bealing that her son had passed, dying of a placental abruption. The next day, after a natural birth did not occur, doctors induced delivery, and her son, Carmelo Arthur McCreary-Bealing, was born dead.
The complaint said the experience was, for Bealing, “the most agonizing period of her life, lying in a bed carrying a child that she was told had already died.”
Sholah P. Pittman, a Georgia obstetrician-gynecologist hired by the couple to serve as a medical expert, signed an affidavit included with the complaint stating that “Emory University Midtown Hospital’s doctors and staff failed to recognize, evaluate, and treat Crystal Bealing’s obstetric hemorrhage and placental abruption, leading to her injuries and the death of her unborn son.”
Based on his review of her medical records, he said the doctors and medical staff “deviated from the accepted standard of care” and were negligent in their failure to adequately triage Bealing’s critical condition upon her arrival, and then failed to evaluate, manage, care for, monitor, diagnose and treat her during her visit.
Pittman also said Emory Healthcare, another named defendant in the lawsuit, “failed to hire and train staff competent to uphold” those standards of care. Taken together, the negligence and conduct of the doctors, nurses and staff of Emory Healthcare “proximately resulted in Plaintiffs suffering the death of Carmelo and Plaintiffs’ extreme physical and mental pain and suffering,” he concluded.
Bealing and McCreary, who are represented by former Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard, seek a jury trial to determine compensatory and special damages “for the full value of the life of Carmelo” and “for Carmelo’s pre-death pain and suffering, funeral expenses, and medical expenses,” as well as for their own physical and mental pain and suffering.
Emory Healthcare did not respond to a request for comment by Atlanta Black Star. However, in a statement last week, Emory said, “Emory Healthcare is committed to providing high-quality, compassionate care to our patients, their families and our community. Because of federal privacy laws, we are unable to comment on any specific patient’s care. We also do not comment on pending litigation,” reported The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Georgia had the ninth-highest infant mortality rate in 2022, with about seven babies dying out of every 1,000 live births, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The overall infant mortality rate in the U.S. was 5.61 per 1,000 live births.
The Black infant mortality rate in Georgia was even higher, with nine infant deaths per 1,000 live births, while white infants died at a rate of 4.8 per 1,000 live births, according to a report by the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Stark disparities in maternal and infant health outcomes by racial and ethnic groups continue to be a growing concern among public health experts in the U.S.
A 2019 study of pregnant women in the U.S. published in Reproductive Health found that 17 percent reported some mistreatment, including health care providers ignoring or refusing their requests for help or failing to respond to requests for help in a reasonable amount of time. Women from African-American, Indigenous, Hispanic, and Asian communities were more than twice as likely to be ignored or refused help as white women in the study.
