Updated: December 24, 2020 9:50:02 AM
Moore’s case sparked outrage and renewed calls to deal with biased medical treatment of black patients. (Source: Facebook)
Written by John Eligon
Lying on a hospital bed with an oxygen tube in her nostrils, the black patient looked at her smartphone and, in a strained voice, complained about a very common experience among blacks in America.
Susan Moore, the patient, said the white doctor at the hospital in the Indianapolis suburb, where she was being treated for COVID-19, minimized her pain complaints. He told her that he felt uncomfortable giving her more narcotics, she said, and suggested that she be discharged.
“I was devastated,” she said in a video posted on Facebook. “He made me feel like I was a drug addict.”
In her post, which has since circulated widely on social media, she showed a mastery of complicated medical terminology and an intricate knowledge of treatment protocols by detailing the ways she defended herself with the medical team. She knew what to ask because she was also a doctor.
But that was not enough to get the treatment and respect she said she deserved. “I defended and maintain that if I were white,” she said in the video, “I wouldn’t have to go through this.”
She ended up being sent home, and on Sunday, just over two weeks after posting the video, Moore, 52, died of complications from COVID-19, said her son, Henry Muhammed.
Moore’s case sparked outrage and renewed calls to deal with biased medical treatment of black patients. Massive research suggests that black patients often receive less treatment than their white counterparts, especially when it comes to relieving pain.
A spokesman for Indiana University Health, the hospital system where Moore complained of poor treatment, said in a statement that he could not comment on specific cases because of privacy laws.
An intricate mix of socioeconomic and health factors has made COVID-19 particularly devastating for the black and Latino communities. Black people died 3.6 times the rate of whites, and Latinos, 2.5 times the rate of white people, according to an analysis by the Brookings Institution.
Moore tested positive for coronavirus on November 29 and was admitted to the hospital, according to her Facebook post, which she wrote on December 4. She wrote that she had to beg the doctor who treated her to give remdesivir, an antiviral medication some doctors use to treat COVID-19.
Moore said he scanned her neck and lungs after her doctor denied she was short of breath, although she said yes, and after he said he could not justify administering more narcotic pain relievers. The test detected problems – pulmonary infiltrates and new lymphadenopathy, she said – and then she started receiving more opioid painkillers. But she said she was in pain for hours before a nurse gave her the dose.
“That’s how black people are killed, when you send them home and they don’t know how to fight for themselves,” said Moore.
Moore’s experience highlights what many black professionals say they regularly encounter. Education cannot protect them from abuse, they say, whether in a hospital or in other settings.
Born in Jamaica, Moore grew up in Michigan. She studied engineering at Kettering University in Flint, Michigan, according to her family, and graduated in medicine from the University of Michigan Medical School.
She was no stranger to the challenges of obtaining adequate medical care, said Muhammed, her 19-year-old son. She had sarcoidosis, an inflammatory disease that attacks the lungs and was often treated in hospitals.
“Almost every time she went to the hospital, she had to defend herself, fight for something in some way, shape or form, just to get a baseline, adequate care,” he said.
An image provided by Henry Muhammed shows Dr. Susan Moore with Muhammed, her 19-year-old son. “(Henry Muhammed via The New York Times)
In his fight against coronavirus at IU Health North Hospital in Carmel, Indiana, Moore wrote in an update on Facebook that he ended up talking to the medical director of the hospital system, who ensured that she would receive better care and that diversity training would be maintained. . She got a new doctor and her pain was being better managed, she wrote.
But even as things seemed to be getting better at the hospital, Moore still felt that the care was not great and that the medical staff became less responsive, according to Muhammed, who spoke to her daily. Although she really didn’t feel well enough to be discharged, she was looking forward to going home and taking care of her parents, he said.
The hospital was discharged on December 7, he said, and she was slow and tired when she got home. The hospital called several times to check on her, he said, and when she didn’t respond, she sent an ambulance. Her mother was barely able to walk and was breathing heavily when the ambulance arrived. She was taken to a different hospital 12 hours after being discharged from the previous one, she said on Facebook.
“I raised the temperature to 103 and my blood pressure dropped to 80/60 with a heart rate of 132,” she wrote.
Moore described his care at the new hospital as compassionate and said he was being treated for bacterial pneumonia in addition to COVID-19 pneumonia. His condition would deteriorate quickly, however. The last time Muhammed spoke to her, just before putting her on the respirator, she was coughing so badly that she could barely speak, he said.
Doctors intubated her on December 10, Muhammed said. The medical team called Zoom in her room and more than a dozen relatives spoke to her, hoping she could hear them even though she was unconscious, he said.
Last Friday, Moore had become 100% dependent on a respirator to breathe, his son said, and doctors said she might not survive. He visited her with his grandparents and said that he loved her and that he didn’t care about him.
“If you want to fight, now is the time to fight,” he remembers telling her. “But if you need to go, I understand.”
Two days later, Moore’s heart stopped beating.