Hospital holding patients hostage

I came across an interesting article this morning on CNN's website. Before I describe it, let me caveat this by saying that, at this point, we only have the family's perspective on the situation in the article; the hospital in question hasn't responded to requests for interviews or statements in any meaningful way, so please take this with a grain (or a boulder, depending) of salt. Part one of the article is here; part two is here. The general storyline is as follows: An eighteen year old girl suffered a brain aneurysm and was rushed to the hospital, whereupon her parents begged for her to be transferred to the Mayo clinic, because they felt their daughter would have a better chance of survival by being treated there. She was transferred, everything was going well and she was improving, then she was transferred to the hospital's rehab unit, where, according to her parents and her own statements, the hospital began a slow campaign of working to take control of her. Her doctors were refusing to speak with her parents, and despite the fact that she was participating in decisions on her own care (being legally an adult), the hospital went so far as to seek medical custody of her, claiming she was medically incapable of making pertinent decisions. Her mother was barred from visiting her due to, according to the hospital:

Quote:

Our care teams act in the best interests of our patients. As a general practice, this includes sharing information with family members and facilitating family visits and interactions with patients and their care providers when the patient is in our care. However, in situations where care may be compromised or the safety and security of our staff are potentially at risk, the family members' ability to be present in the hospital may be restricted.

It got far enough along that two nurses were purportedly assigned to this girl's room on a constant basis to prevent her family from trying anything. Her stepfather was desperate to get her away from the clinic, so he cooked up a ruse where he claimed to the nurses that her grandmother wanted to visit, but couldn't make it all the way up to her room, being 80 years old, so with the nurses trailing along behind, he wheeled his stepdaughter down to the lobby and out the door to a waiting truck, where her mother was waiting in the truck. They managed to get their daughter into the vehicle despite the nurses trying to stop them (the girl had previously signed a form stating she was leaving AMA, or against medical advice that her family found and printed off the internet, since the hospital itself wouldn't give them the form), and they got her away. The hospital then reported a patient abduction to the police, but the police got suspicious when the hospital was telling them that the girl was incapable of making decisions regarding her care and was accusing her mother of having a history of mental health issues (she didn't), but at the same time was also telling the police that the girl had fully participated in decisions regarding her healthcare. By that point the family had gotten the girl to another hospital, where doctors had reviewed her case and made the call that, despite what the Mayo clinic was saying, she was fully capable of being released and cared for at home. Since there was a second opinion contradicting the first, the police backed off, and the family returned home.

This girl is now done with her rehab, has graduated high school, and will be a freshman in college in the fall. I found this whole story very interesting for a number of reasons. I'm aware we don't have the hospital's perspective on this (since they haven't given any official statements or interviews), so I'm very reluctant to immediately place censure on the hospital, but I'm amazed that the perception of this family is that this hospital was essentially kidnapping their daughter and holding her hostage. My immediate question is, of course, WHY? Why would the hospital want to more or less kidnap this girl, who by all available accounts was doing very well in her recovery, in order to keep her there in the hospital? Money comes to mind, but this is the Mayo clinic; I find it hard to believe they'd be suffering any money issues (although I'll concede the point if someone can produce evidence to the contrary) to the point that essentially kidnapping a patient is the response that comes to mind. Doctor arrogance is another, albeit very much more remote possibility; one of the things the article kept saying was how puffed up on their own importance some of the doctors who were involved in this girl's care seemed to be; "I run this entire floor" and so forth. But it also sounded to me like this girl's family was, in their zeal to ensure their daughter got the best care (which any parents would do, I imagine), very controlling and confrontational; they demanded several caregivers be removed from their daughter's care team on more than one occasion, for instance. The caregivers may have, in the face of that sort of confrontational attitude, thought that the girl's parents were interfering in her care and taken steps to remedy that. Quite frankly I don't know, but I'm interested in what you guys think; was the hospital entirely at fault here and way overstepped their bounds, or is there an underlying situation here that we haven't seen the evidence for yet? The floor is open!

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