According to Morse’s family, he was on vacation with his wife, Dana, their children and other family members. An experienced skier, he lost control and slammed into a tree. Dana Morse, a nurse practitioner who has spent a decade working in intensive care, was present at the time of the accident and said Morse suffered severe chest trauma and internal trauma. Morse was awake and responsive immediately after the accident, but in significant pain.

Morse’s wife said that paramedics did an initial assessment of Morse at the base of the hill, but didn’t take his blood pressure, start an IV or take other key basic steps. Then they started to put him in the ambulance, but he went into cardiac arrest.

What went wrong?

As the ambulance raced to the hospital with Dana Morse in the front seat, she said she sensed her husband was dying and asked to sit in the back so she could hold his hand. Instead, the paramedics got annoyed with her requests, stopped the ambulance and left her out on the side of the road.

Dana Morse said she had to flag down a passing car to get a ride back to the ski resort so she could get her car and drive herself to the local hospital, Franklin Memorial Hospital in Farmington. Morse died en route to the hospital.

For reasons that aren’t yet clear, the ambulance returned with Morse’s body to the ski resort’s medical clinic. When Dana Morse arrived at the hospital, staff had no idea where her husband was, or what his condition was.

Administrators at Franklin Memorial have launched an investigation into both the care he received and the allegations about how his family was treated. Among the questions are whether he should have received more aggressive treatment earlier and if he should’ve been flown to another hospital as another skier was that same weekend.

Linda Cole, Wilderotter’s partner of 11 years and her legal spouse, arrived at the hospital, identified herself as Wilderotter’s partner …  and wasn’t allowed to see her. Only after Wilderotter’s sister also arrived was Cole given access to her partner.

Such a denial is a violation of both federal hospital visitation rights and Maryland law.

A hospital representative called the couple six weeks later to apologize, blaming poor communication and a new employee’s misunderstanding of the law for the denial. The hospital said the incident wasn’t an example of discrimination and that it’s reviewing patient rights training to make sure no one on staff makes such an error in the future.

Wilderotter and Cole weren’t satisfied. Cole has filed a complaint with the Joint Commission and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services over the incident.

Of course, since Hernandez is reportedly thriving after the procedure, she may not be too concerned about the details of how the heart got to her.

The heart was donated by the relatives of a man who died in a car accident. It traveled nearly 300 miles by ambulance, plane and helicopter to get to Hernandez’s hospital, while national news reported on the case. Traffic was stopped to allow the helicopter to land near the hospital. After disembarking, one of the staffers wheeling the heart’s cooler stumbled. The cooler’s lid flew off and the heart landed in the street.

The medics quickly grabbed the heart, which fortunately had been wrapped in plastic, put it back in the cooler and continued on their way.

Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) is finding itself on the wrong end of the Internet outrage machine after a patient’s mother wrote a blog posting that claims the hospital turned the child down for a kidney transplant solely because the child is intellectually disabled.

The child, two-year-old Amelia Rivera, was born with Wolf-Hirschhorn Syndrome, which commonly causes severe mental and physical delays, seizures and heart damage. Kidney damage is a less common, but known, symptom.

In her emotional post, Rivera’s mother claimed that a doctor at CHOP said her daughter wouldn’t qualify for a transplant solely because of her developmental delays and “quality of life.” Rivera also painted a picture of stunning callousness. According to her post, “I said [to the doctor] so you’re saying in six months to a year when her kidneys fail you want us to let her die? And he said yes.”

The information we have is one-sided, as HIPAA regs don’t allow the hospital to give its version of the conversation, or the reasons behind the decision.

But in the wake of emails and Facebook postings criticizing the hospital, CHOP released a statement that it didn’t discriminate in any way against Rivera and that mental and physical disabilities aren’t considerations in transplant decisions. The hospital also noted that it has in the past performed many transplants on many children with a variety of disabilities.

Medical reasons ignored by community?

But even with medical details unavailable, there are hints even in Rivera’s post that there are valid medical reasons for denying the transplant. The necessity of the transplant itself isn’t clear: Rivera claims the transplant is “life-saving,” and insists repeatedly in her post that she will stop at nothing to make sure her daughter receives a transplant. But she didn’t mention in her post or subsequent media interviews why dialysis isn’t even being considered.

Additionally, the family planned to use a privately donated kidney, so qualifying for the organ transplant wait list wasn’t an issue.

Most importantly, Rivera acknowledges that her daughter has had prior heart surgery and has seizures. Both of which make the complicated and intense regimen of medications post-transplant both hard to manage and potentially dangerous.

Those key details are being routinely skipped over by the family’s supporters, who have launched a social media campaign to urge CHOP to change its ruling. CHOP has agreed to meet with the family later this week to discuss the matter further.

It’s hard not to empathize with a very sick two-year-old girl and the parents who clearly love her. But not every treatment is a viable option for every patient. The case highlights the on-going need for health care professionals at all levels to improve their ability to communicate the pros and cons of specific treatments and to relay that information in a way that doesn’t upset patients and their families who may already be emotionally frayed.

She said that while she wasn’t planning to make any major lifestyle changes in the wake of the diagnosis, she did make changes “in” her life, including taking more walks and taking a drug called Victoza. Other than drinking less sweet tea she didn’t mention any dietary changes. Diet, of course, plays a huge part in both preventing and managing Type 2 diabetes.

Deen’s mention of the drug she takes is no accident: She also announced she’s a paid spokesperson for the drug.

And that admission, along with her lack of acknowledgement that her high-fat recipes could contribute to the disease, is drawing fire from many nutritional experts, health care professionals and some fans. When asked if the diagnosis would cause her to re-examine her recipes, she said “I’m your cook, I’m not your doctor. You are going to have to be responsible for yourself.” (Her son, incidentally, recently landed his own show, “Not My Mamma’s Meals” which focus on lighter versions of the same kind of foods Deen makes.)

No doubt, people are responsible for what they put in their own mouths. But the average American’s nutritional ignorance is well-documented. It’s easy to believe that many people treat recipes touted by someone as popular as Deen as a normal and healthy way to eat — not as the type of high-carb fat-bomb they should treat as an occasional indulgence.

Even other chefs have been critical of Deen’s position. Chef and TV personality Anthony Bourdain once said of her cuisine (before the announcement of her diabetes), “If I were on at seven at night and loved by millions of people at every age, I would think twice before telling an already obese nation that it’s OK to eat food that is killing us.” After her announcement he tweeted a response that likened her stance to “getting into the leg-breaking business” in order to sell a lot of crutches.

Does Deen have a responsibility to model healthier eating patterns to her audience? Or is it up to grown adults to figure out their own path to healthy eating? Sound off in the comments.

While you might think it’s the patients with particularly negative experiences who are most likely to go online and voice their opinions, the opposite is actually true, at least according to one recent research paper.

The paper was presented at a conference sponsored by the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences in Montreal, Quebec.

The authors looked at the ratings for doctors on websites such as Angie’s List, Yelp.com, Vitals.com, Healthgrades.com and RateMDs.com, and compared them to ratings in offline surveys.

The results: Overall, doctors with negative ratings in offline surveys were less likely to rated online than those with positive offline reviews.

In other words, the common belief that people only post an online review when they have something negative to say may not be true when it comes to physician ratings.

The study did confirm other conventional wisdom about online reviews — namely, that online reviewers exaggerate and aren’t likely to say anything when they have neutral opinions.

Eleven of the patients are children, two of whom were in the some day care facility. All of them have recovered.

The CDC believes the virus is transmitted from workers who pick up the bug from pigs and then pass it on to other people. The agency has asked public health labs nationwide to be alert for other cases, which should be reported to the CDC.

This virus is different from the strain that was behind the 2009 pandemic. This year’s flu vaccine included the H3N2 strain. Patients looking for more information on how to prevent infection with the flu should check out CDC’s site.

The College Station Medical Center recently finished a major upgrade and expansion that included the addition of 2,200 square feet in the ER, five new treatment areas and six “fast track” treatment areas which are designated to handle patients who need less extensive treatment.

A hospital spokesperson said College Station is the only ER in the region that publicizes its ER wait times and promises that patients will be seen by an ER doc within 30 minutes of arrival. A large part of the building redesign was intended to create spaces where medical staff could see those patients more quickly and better prioritize treatment and use of resources.

Routine testing discovered she had diverticulitis, and a follow-up CT scan showed she had a foreign body in her stomach. It turned out to be a pen.

The woman told her doctor that about 25 years earlier, she had been poking at a spot on her tonsil with the pen when she slipped, fell and accidentally swallowed the pen. At the time, both her husband and her doctor dismissed the possibility and said she must have been mistaken. (X-rays taken at the time showed no pen in her gut.)

On this most recent visit to the doctor, the pen was removed — and found to still work. Her symptoms have gone away, and the hospital is using the case as a teaching example of two rules: 1) Abdominal X-rays don’t show every single foreign object, and 2) Even if a patient’s story sounds unbelievable, it may just be true.

The study, published recently in BMJ, looked at more than 64,000 women pregnant with a single child, who gave birth between April 2008 and April 2010.

For the purposes of the study, planned C-section births, C-sections before the onset of labor and unplanned home births weren’t included. The study compared the location of the birth (at home, a midwifery unit, a hospital, etc.) to see the number of medical interventions needed, as well as outcomes for the mother and child.

Overall, there were no significant differences and all types of birth options were relatively safe. But fewer interventions were done during births that took place outside of an obstetric unit. The mother’s medical history also made a difference: Women giving birth for the first time had a statistically significant jump in poor post-birth outcomes.

However, the study’s authors said a variety of birth environments should still be offered to women with low-risk pregnancies.