I need help for a scene I'm writing

[valarltd]

Here's the set-up:

Our Hero was badly beaten by five young men at approximately 4 PM. He was left in a public place, an alley. Someone found him about six-ish and took him to the ER. He had his ID, and his contact information in his wallet. His phone was smashed in the attack. He arrived unconscious, but regained consciousness about nine o'clock.

How and when would the ER let his listed next-of-kin and responsible party know he's there?

When he arrives? When he awakes?

Would they call? Would they send the cops?
I have cops showing up on the NoK's doorstep right now, is that right? or would they only do that if he died? NoK called the cops, after a 45 minute grocery run went to four hours.

Help!

Comments

[m-barnette.livejournal.com]

Typically the next of kin is contacted ASAP via the police who come to the door.

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I had no idea. All my ER visits have been me going to them. None of them have been violent.

[ravenskye8.livejournal.com]

Around here, hospital would contact family directly as soon as is feasible given the situation... How soon "ASAP" translates to has to do with the amount of staff available, and how busy the ER is...

For example - if it's an average day, Hero is brought in where the medical staff work to stabilize him while a clerk would be given the task of identification and contacting of family. Contacting family is of utmost importance, since if Hero is unconcious, someone else needs to consent to care.

Now - if ER is busy, and there is no free clerk to contact family immediately, assumption of consent for care is made (i.e. yes please save my life if I'm dying), Hero is stabilized, and contact is made to the family as soon as someone is able to get to it. Triage is done for this task - complex cases where decisions need to be made get contacted first.

Unless the police are the ones who brought in Hero, the police would be contacted _after_ the patient is stabilized (or after patient dies), if criminal assault is suspected.

Most likely in the scenario you mention, the hospital would be contacting NoK based on contact information contained in Hero's wallet. If the contact information is incomplete, i.e. can't find a phone number, the police may be called in "early" to assist with identifying NoK. Timing for contact, as mentioned above, will depend on state of Hero and busyness of ER.

Also given the scenario - the hospital would alert the police of the incident, but an officer/detective would not be dispatched to the hospital until Hero regains conciousness.

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

It's Halloween night in a small college town. Still early enough that nobody has gotten drunk and hurt themselves.

I think the cops brought him in.
And the information is very complete. He's living with the president of the university, who is a stickler for such things.

[m-barnette.livejournal.com]

Okay it would be campus police that went to the house to notify next of kin. I lived with a campus cop in Athens, GA. If there were family locally, then they went to speak to them and let them know what was going on. Sometimes they'd even drive the mom or dad to the hospital if no car was available for the family to use.

[ravenskye8.livejournal.com]

Depends on which "cops" brought him in... campus safety or local/state police...

If campus safety found him, I am assuming that they are probably already aware of the living arrangements, and they'd bring Hero to the hospital while a spare officer went to the President's home and informed him... President would probably arrive at the hospital soon after Hero and therefore hospital would have no need to try and contact him.

If it is local/state police, it's then a toss up... if the police are busy, as they probably would be on Halloween, they might leave ID/contact to up to the hospital, and just say "call us back in when he wakes up"... but it's a "small town" - so the police might say "we'll contact NoK for you"...

If I were writing the scene, and it were the local/state police involved, I'd have the hospital call to inform the President, and the local police picking him up to bring him over to the hospital. Small college town = officer thinking that distressed President driving himself while druken students and trick-or-treating children are on the streets is a bad idea...

In any case, if the police picked him up, there should be both a member of the police and the medical staff at the hospital to meet him when President arrives. Both will brief him on what's happened so far with Hero, medical staff will have papers to sign about consent for further treatment and insurance/payment guarantees, privacy/HIPAA stuff, and a guarantee of patient rights. Medical staff will also go over current care plan and prognosis, and the police officer/detective will interview President for leads to the crime.

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

It's the local cops who find him.

And that's about how I have it going.

But there are complications at the hospital. A matter of a padlocked leather collar cut off of Hero's neck. Some old scars. And this is not a terribly progressive town. Bad enough he's gay to start with. There are going to be some hard questions.

[ravenskye8.livejournal.com]

Ooooh... Intriguing.

Why is it, I'm suddenly setting this story up at my college... :)

Not a progressive town, though campus was mainly liberal, but had pockets of anti-gay religious fundamentalism that would have had a field day with something like this...

[grynner.livejournal.com]

I'd have to more or less agree.
If campus cops brought him in, and he lived "on campus" they'd see about checking with school admin or at his house for NoK info and any pertinent medical info/allergies after getting him to ER.
If normal cops brought him in, a car would most likely notify school admin and check at his home (from the DL info) to notify NoK/friends/roommates had family contact/medical info for him.
If a Samaritan found him, then ER would contact local PD to check out his address for contact/NoK/medical info. If cops weren't involved from the start, and it's a busy nite like on halloween, then that contact might take an hour after he got to the ER or it could take 6 or so. And if ya really want to poke at the establishment/bureaucracy and the oh too realistic "oops" that happens in reality, when the cops show up after 6 or 7 hours to check if he lives with friends/roommates/NoK, they run into the cops who are leaving after getting follow up reports on his "dissappearance". Or more sadly, have the 2 different cops run into each other the next day, or the day after when they finally get around to following up on the different cases.
No, I'm not the least bit cynical in thinking how screwy the best intentioned bureaucracies can be.

[stormsdotter.livejournal.com]

It sounds like this is covered. little_details is great for these questions.

I answer a lot of architectural queries.