I’m bothered by the media’s negligence in covering a tragedy of national significance that occurred at Methodist Dallas Medical Center last weekend. Jacqueline Ama Pokuaa, a 45-year-old social worker who emigrated to the U.S. from Ghana, and Katie Annette Flowers, a 63-year-old nurse with four children and two grandchildren, were murdered by a crazed gunman with a lengthy rap sheet. That they chose to work in MDMC’s maternity ward focused on bringing newborns into this world makes their killings all the more sickening.
The gunman, Nestor Oswaldo Hernandez, reportedly on parole and wearing an active ankle monitor, was visiting the hospital to be with his girlfriend who was in labor giving birth to his child. According to Dallas media, Hernandez began acting strangely and accused his girlfriend of cheating on him. Hernandez shot Pokuaa when she entered the delivery room and Flowers was shot when she looked into the room after hearing the commotion.
The tragedy might have been much worse had hospital police Sgt. Robert Rangel not been in a nearby room investigating a robbery. Media reports said Rangel shot Hernandez in the leg, called for backup, and Hernandez was arrested. Hernandez was reloading his gun when Rangel shot him.
The MDMC tragedy comes as no surprise to many U.S. hospital workers, particularly those who staff ER departments. Violence against hospital workers has increased dramatically since the onslaught of Covid, as an epidemic of untreated mental illness has resulted in legions of unhinged individuals being dumped in ER departments because the police have nowhere else to take them. The American Hospital Association says that 44% of nurses reported an increase in physical violence since the pandemic and 68% reported an increase in verbal abuse.
The ER at Beaumont Troy, the second busiest ER in southeast Michigan, in early August might have experienced a bloodbath if it wasn’t for a hospital security officer named Cedric Wyckoff, who noticed a middle-aged man in the main ER treatment area with what Wyckoff suspected was a concealed firearm.
Wycoff’s suspicions proved correct: The man was carrying a loaded gun, two clips for the firearm, and two large pocketknives. Wycoff confiscated the weapons and called Troy police. Although it’s illegal to carry firearms into a hospital, Troy police didn’t arrest the man, but merely issued a civil infraction, a minor violation.
“Everyone was furious,” a Beaumont ER source said after word got around that Troy police didn’t arrest the armed visitor. “They think we are just a small suburban hospital where bad things can’t happen.”
It’s not known what, if any, menace the gun carrying visitor was planning, but based on what I’ve read it’s not known if Hernandez, the Dallas shooter, planned to kill hospital staff when he entered Methodist Dallas hospital to visit his girlfriend. Regardless, there’s a reason why even people with concealed weapons permits can’t bring their firearms into a hospital.
Beaumont Troy’s ER staff were grateful for Wyckoff ‘s alertness and for averting a potential catastrophe.
“Cedric is very protective of the hospital staff,” a source told me. “He’s always on point.”
Wycoff’s history indicates he was born to be a hero.
In December 2018, Detroit’s FOX station reported that while looking for a wheelchair at Beaumont Troy, Cedric noticed a patient in distress clutching his chest. The patient fell to the ground before he could answer if he needed assistance.
“I went over there and checked to see if (the patient) had a pulse, he had no pulse, and to see if he was breathing,” Wyckoff told a FOX reporter. “I started doing CPR on him and lo and behold, he came back.”
Wycoff, a retired police officer and chaplain, was already well known to the FOX station. Two months earlier, the station said Fox was working as a chaplain at a homicide investigation scene when the victim’s father experienced a medical emergency. Wyckoff performed CPR to resuscitate the man.
A month earlier, Detroit’s local ABC station reported that Wycoff was having lunch with his wife and friends on the Detroit Princess Riverboat when a 72-year-old Indiana tourist named Steven Richards began having seizures. Wyckoff told a reporter that when he reached Richards, he couldn’t find a pulse, or a heartbeat, and the man had stopped breathing.
Wyckoff immediately began administering chest compressions and Richards revived.
“I may not have an M.D. at the end of my name but I have ‘G-O-D,’” Wyckoff told a reporter. He credited his police academy CPR trainer and his former Detroit precinct colleagues for his healthcare skills.
A local councilman witnessed Wycoff’s heroics and arranged for him to receive a Spirit of Detroit award, which honors acts of courage.
Wyckoff told the FOX reporter that while he appreciated the recognition, public acclaim isn’t what motivated him.
“We don’t do this for recognition, we do it from our heart,” Wyckoff said. “You can’t put a price tag on what you do from the heart.”
Wyckoff isn’t the only person Beaumont Troy’s ER staff regards as hero. Another is Jack Poma, who was recently fired as Director of Nursing Services as part of a recent round of 400 terminations Corewell Health CEO Tina Freese Decker callously said only involved “management and non-patient/health plan member-facing roles.” The layoffs came despite an earlier promise from Freese Decker, former CEO of Grand Rapids-based Spectrum Health, that no layoffs would result after she acquired Beaumont Health, the biggest hospital system in southeastern Michigan, earlier this year.
The combined operations of Spectrum and Beaumont were recently renamed Corewell.
(My dim view of Freese Decker’s communications skills can be found here and my doubts about her leadership capabilities can be found here and here.)
An ER source told me that Poma, who routinely put in 10-12 hours a day, was critical to the entire hospital’s operations. A former paramedic, Poma also served as the liaison for Beaumont Troy and the EMS communities in two neighboring counties.
“People were balling when they heard Poma was let go,” the source told me. “He was about 18 months away from retirement. They couldn’t let him finish out his career? Everyone is outraged!” the source told me.
What makes Poma’s firing galling is the golden parachute paid to former Beaumont CEO John Fox, who bolted after convincing Freese Decker to take over an institution he destroyed. In addition to receiving about $50 million to run an eight-hospital system for about seven years, it’s believed Fox received tens of millions of dollars to disappear after the deal was consummated in February.
Spectrum reported that Beaumont lost nearly $100 million in the first six months after it acquired the troubled hospital system, nearly double projections.
“It’s a joke how Corewell is running this place,” a source told me. “They are starting to come in and do all this corporate stuff — it’s awful.”
Poma didn’t have direct patient-facing responsibilities, but his work had a major impact on nurses who do. Cedrick Wyckoff officially doesn’t have patient facing responsibilities, but that didn’t stop him from saving a patient in distress.
Freese Decker would be wise to remember that she also doesn’t have any patient facing responsibilities, and her track record since acquiring Beaumont makes clear that she should be among those being shown the door.
Therein is the tragedy of U.S. hospitals. I’m aware of no heroes working in the executive suites – mostly empty suits.