The hospital treated him just like they treat anyone else, which isn’t a particularly bad thing. Then again, it’s not like Moline is a metropolis, it’s possible they really couldn’t accommodate Prince in a private room.
4 Likes
Good that they don’t have a “VIP wing”, bad that they don’t have enough rooms for everyone 
1 Like
Yeah… Only speculation on my part, but if it was percocet, a cocktail, and “something to help him sleep”, that could do anyone in. Anyone including (especially?) a non-addict.
6 Likes
I’m not talking VIP room. Did you know that any U.S. hospital that gets any money at all from federal sources (hint: virtually all hospitals) is required to have a private room in the E.R. where rape victims are to be taken to give them privacy from other people? And if someone is in the ICU, for example, that’s one patient per room as well. I’ve spent more than enough time in hospitals in small towns in several states (fun fact: the pre-insurance cost of multiple X-rays when my arm was broken? $25!) to know that they are more likely rather than less likely to have individual treatment rooms rather than the bullpen with curtains you see in TV dramas.
That’s all I’m saying: it doesn’t smell right that the hospital wouldn’t give him a private room. I think that’s an excuse for him wanting to leave, or his handlers wanting to get him out of there before a media frenzy, or something like that. But the result is that they’ve made the hospital look like the bad guy, and I doubt that’s really true.
12 Likes
I realize this is a small detour in the story, but anyone else do a
double-take while reading that the hospital wouldn’t allow Prince to
have a private room? That doesn’t make any sense.
Probably they didn’t have an available private room. I almost delivered my baby in the waiting area (which had beds and curtains, so it wasn’t literally in the hall), and another women did deliver there that night, because they ran out of rooms. It happens.
12 Likes
I’ve had that happen in a hospital: when I had my daughter she was a c-section so they had to give me a private room. And all the private rooms on the maternity ward were full. I don’t know what they ended up doing (because I was on all the drugs), but I did eventually get into a private room.
I think newer hospitals pretty much are only built with private rooms now, because HIPAA concerns. But some of the older ones probably still have the semi-private wards.
8 Likes
Dear prescription painkillers: next time please just take Limbaugh instead.
17 Likes
9 Likes
Many hospitals don’t have them because it makes nursing care easier. However, I’ve always wondered how this flies with HIPAA since your health care advice and discussions are out there for your roommate and his/her friends and family members to take in.
1 Like
He wasn’t a patient in the hospital, and thus not in a ward. The Emergency Department (known as ER to laypeople, and ED to medical people) is set up differently. It’s actually more important to isolate patients in the ED as quickly as possible because they all have different needs: for example, you don’t want a kid with measles next to an immune-deficient patient, or a gunshot victim next to a kid with a broken arm.
4 Likes
The answer is “carefully”; they take extra precautions to keep your medical information private in a shared room, but it’s also at the patient’s discretion. I work on informational systems for hospital rooms, and shared rooms tend to keep patient info confined to clipboards while private rooms display all your info on the wall.
1 Like
But how does this work when a physician discusses treatment or a diagnosis? Curtains only do so much, correct?
2 Likes
Sad to hear that he had an opiate addiction, especially considering how devout he was with his religion i was sure that he would’ve avoided getting hooked on painkillers. Though given the circumstances as to why he was taking them i do understand why he would’ve. Sad that both him and Michael Jackson died for fairly similar reasons.
1 Like
Having thankfully only been in hospitals for outpatient treatment, I can definitely say that curtains do nothing at all to block sound; I honestly don’t know how that works with HIPAA regulations. When my stepmother was in hospice, she was in a shared room when they discussed all of her cancer treatments, and the certainly didn’t mince words.
1 Like
From what I’ve read, what killed Prince was checking out of the hospital against doctor’s orders because he couldn’t have a private room. Sad.
Yeah, I had asthma complicated pneumonia and was in the hospital for four days. 2 days I was in the ER in a room, then I was moved into a HALLWAY in the ONCOLOGY unit because there were no beds available. The only reason I got to stay in the ER for 2 days is because my doctor told me to sit the bed as long as possible with no rooms available.
Still, if I were Prince, maybe they could have kicked someone out of a room and into a hall way??? 
2 Likes
I read an article that Percoset can complicate respiratory disease.
Because opioids can depress respiration, which is also a common effect of the flu, the use of opioids by someone who’s sick with the flu could make breathing even more difficult, said Dr. Deni Carise, chief clinical officer at Recovery Centers of America, which plans to open seven new drug-treatment facilities.
7 Likes
Or perhaps there are 100 purple lockers in a room of his house:
4 Likes
Honestly, someone would have volunteered to leave their room so Prince could have it if they asked nice. “Sure, I’m in a lot of pain here but Prince could touch the actual air I breathed.”
1 Like
Or Prince could have checked into a Twin City’s hospital or arranged for care at Paisley Park…
1 Like
