FOULUP AT HOSP PROBED

ER patient was ‘lost’

STATE HEALTH officials and city investigators are now looking into how emergency room staff at cityrun Lincoln Hospital lost track of a patient who wound up in an irreversible coma and died.

The agencies responded to a Daily News report Tuesday about 53-year-old handyman Angel Rivera, who arrived at Lincoln with a head injury and was left unattended in a waiting room for nine hours.

During that time, ER staff completely lost track of him, at one point deciding he’d left the building against medical advice.

Video obtained by The News showed Rivera never left, but sat instead in the waiting room where Lincoln staffers placed him, deteriorating to the point where a bump in the head turned into fatal bleeding of the brain.

When ER staff “found” Rivera on the morning of July 20, 2014, he was in a coma and bleeding from the mouth. He remained in a vegetative state for two years and died in August 2016 from a heart attack.

The state Health Department, which has oversight over all New York hospitals, “is aware of the situation and will review the circumstances of the event,” department spokeswoman Erin Silk told The News.

Hospitals are required to report all “adverse events” to the department. Due to patient privacy laws, the department would not confirm if it learned of the Rivera incident from Lincoln Hospital or from The News.

City Department of Investigation spokeswoman Diane Struzzi said Tuesday that that agency “is now reviewing circumstances surrounding the incident.”

Struzzi noted that at the time of the 2014 incident, her agency did not have direct oversight of the city Health & Hospital Corp. The DOI began monitoring the hospital agency in November 2015.

A Lincoln supervising physician told Rivera’s family the hospital was conducting an internal review of the circumstances surrounding the man’s treatment.

Hospital agency officials have denied a News request to reveal the results of that investigation, citing patient privacy laws. Rivera’s family, which is suing Lincoln, was also denied the report.