Patient warns of ER bonus plan

In the hospital emergency room, time is valuable. Dave Roberts, 47, wonders if a doctor had taken more time with him in the ER, maybe he would not be in a wheelchair.

"I feel like I was pushed to the curb," Roberts told FOX 13’s investigative reporter Doug Smith.

Two years ago, an ambulance brought Roberts to Brooksville Regional Hospital after he injured his back at work. His wife, Doreen Roberts, knew it was bad as soon as she arrived.

“I could hear him screaming in the back of the emergency room,” Doreen recalled. “That's how loud it was.”

Doreen says the doctor who saw her husband did not order a battery of tests.

"They didn't undress him at all,” she continued. “All they did was give him two shots and give him an x-ray. That was it.”

In a lawsuit, she and her husband claim the doctor sent Dave Roberts home even thought he couldn’t walk or couldn’t control his bladder.

“I go, 'My pants are soaked,'” Dave Roberts recalled telling the hospital staff. He says he was embarrassed when someone came to wheel him to his car and he lost control of his bladder a second time while leaving the hospital to go home.

“He's going to put his arms under my arms to lift me up out of the wheelchair. Well, when he stands me up and whoosh, there goes my bladder, a big puddle on the sidewalk,” recalled Dave.

According the lawsuit filed against the doctor, his group, and the hospital, some doctors at Brooksville Regional Hospital had a financial incentive to move patients quickly through the ER and were offered a quarterly bonus if the average length of stay for a patient in the ER was less than two hours.

“When it was brought to our attention that that's what goes on, we were both in shock,” Doreen offered.

Dr. Jay Wolfson, a professor at the University of South Florida, specializes in public health policy and law. He says many hospitals offer bonuses, but he’s concerned about this situation.

“When the bonus is tied to processing people faster, rather than an outcome measure of quality or safety, it’s the wrong incentive,” Dr. Wolfson told Doug Smith. “You run the increased risk of placing people who are sick or injured or ill of not having their condition caught or treated properly.”

No one at Brooksville Regional Hospital would speak with FOX 13 about Dave Roberts's lawsuit or answer questions about the ER bonus. Court records show the doctor, his group, and the hospital have denied doing anything wrong.

Roberts was sent home from the ER on a Friday. He went to see a specialist on Monday, and that doctor immediately recognized a serious problem

“A piece of my vertebrae broke off on the inside and took a chunk out of my spinal cord and cut the sack,” said Roberts.

The specialist performed emergency surgery but according to the lawsuit, it was too late. The lawsuit claims Roberts "had suffered permanent, irreversible neurological deficits by the time of surgery."

“It's hard to deal with this,” added Doreen, whose husband used to love traveling and spending time outdoors. “Our life has changed completely.”

“I end up like this just so he can put a couple of bucks in his pocket?” Dave asked.

His wife admits they are haunted by that terrible thought.