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Comment by jordansmithnz | Hacker News Reader

I’ve seen a similar thing happen at another well known NY hospital. My wife was waiting to give birth with all beds taken up. A couple walks in, very unhappy that there is a wait, and we exchanged some conversation with them. It was quite apparent they were from wealthy families. She had requested to be induced, after being a couple of days past her due date (extremely normal for a first pregnancy).

A nurse told us privately that we’re first on the list for a room as my wife was most in need of care; there was one becoming available in an hour or two. However, the other couple started complaining and calling family members. They were ushered off to a different waiting room. We waited 15 hours for a bed, and in the meantime heard someone give birth in the hallway.

A few days later we bumped into the same couple on the way out of the hospital. They’d been given a bed 12 hours before we eventually got one despite being there voluntarily.

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> they were there for a voluntary c-section.

This is the key to understanding this incident. A voluntary c-section is scheduled surgery. There is already an operating room reserved for it and staff. As with other scheduled surgeries, the patients and their families often have a pre-op waiting area where they wait for the surgery, so that there can be minimal delay getting them back to the operating room when it is ready for them.

My guess is that the determining factor in their shorter waiting was not their wealth, but rather the fact that their surgery was scheduled.

Source: Am a medical doctor trained in surgery.

Now that I recall more clearly, I got this part wrong… they had requested an early induction (not a scheduled c-section). Unsure if that changes things, but they weren’t going straight to an operating room.

This sounds like a scheduled induction.

Now I have been involved during medical school with a lot of them. Every one of them I saw, it was a very miserable experience for the woman. Basically, the body is not ready for birth, but you give various drugs to force the body to give birth.

These inductions are done when there is some risk to either the mother or baby. A big cause for an early induction is pre-eclampsia which can be a life threatening condition and is treated with early induction.

For inductions you have to have careful monitoring of the baby and mother because you may need to convert to an emergency c-section.

Because of all this, it is not unreasonable for the scheduled induction to be taken first.

I don’t want to discount your experience here, but it seems unlikely to me that what happened followed ordinary medical prioritization.

It’s tricky to relay over a short internet comment the full experience and context - for example, hearing the phone calls the couple made to family/hospital, the full conversation the nurse had with us about priority, or the missing detail that my wife had pre-eclampsia. I guess we don’t know with 100% certainty, but having been in the situation, I’d say there is a 98+% chance that the status/wealth of the couple directly influenced how soon they were given a bed.

(Sorry to add facts after the original comment; I wanted to avoid writing something too lengthy but I can see how these details may have been necessary).

Usually inductions are scheduled too. At least in my family’s case it was.

Someone needs to make a name and shame website for this frankly.

Ahh yes, because bullying people on the internet is such a positive thing for society—-especially when done solely based on rumor, assumption, and when there is an incomplete understanding of all the facts of the situation.

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