Updated: December 24, 2020 9:50:02 AM
Moore’s case has sparked outrage and renewed calls to grapple with biased medical treatment of black patients. (Source: Facebook)
Written by John Eligon
As she lay in a hospital bed with an oxygen tube around her nostrils, the black patient stared into her smartphone and complained in a tense voice about an experience all too common among black people in America.
Susan Moore, the patient, said the white doctor at the hospital in suburban Indianapolis where she was being treated for COVID-19 had downplayed her pain symptoms. He told her he was uncomfortable giving her any more narcotics, she said, and suggested she be fired.
“I was crushed,” she said in a video on Facebook. “He made me feel like a drug addict.”
In her post, which has since been widely circulated on social media, she demonstrated a mastery of complicated medical terminology and an intricate knowledge of treatment protocols, while outlining the ways she’d advocated for herself to medical staff. She knew what to ask because she too was a doctor.
But that wasn’t enough to get her treatment and respect that she said she deserved. “I did and I will stick with it if I was white,” she said in the video, “I shouldn’t have to go through that.”
She was eventually sent home, and on Sunday, just over two weeks after the video was posted, Moore, 52, died of complications from COVID-19, her son, Henry Muhammed, said.
Moore’s case has sparked outrage and renewed calls to grapple with biased medical treatment of black patients. Extensive research suggests that black patients often receive treatment that is inferior to 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 was unable to comment on specific cases due to privacy laws.
A complicated mix of socio-economic and health factors has made COVID-19 particularly devastating for black and Latino communities. According to an analysis by the Brookings Institution, black people die 3.6 times as fast as whites, and Latinos 2.5 times as fast as whites.
Moore tested positive for the coronavirus on Nov. 29 and was hospitalized, according to her Facebook post, which she wrote on Dec. 4. She wrote that she should beg the attending physician to give her remdesivir, an antiviral drug. some doctors use to treat COVID-19.
Moore said she got a scan of her neck and lungs after her doctor denied she was short of breath, despite telling him she was, and after telling her he couldn’t justify narcotizing her any more give painkillers. The scan found problems – pulmonary infiltrates and new lymphadenopathy, she said – and so she started getting more opioid painkillers. But she said she had been in pain for hours before a nurse gave her the dose.
“This is how black people are killed, if you send them home and they don’t know how to fight for themselves,” Moore said.
Moore’s experience highlights what many black professionals say they encountered on a regular basis. Education cannot protect them from abuse, they say, whether in a hospital or in another setting.
Born in Jamaica, Moore grew up in Michigan. She majored in engineering at Kettering University in Flint, Michigan, according to her family, and received her medical degree from the University of Michigan Medical School.
She was no stranger to the challenges of getting quality medical care, said Muhammed, her 19-year-old son. She had sarcoidosis, an inflammatory disease that affects the lungs, and was often treated in hospitals.
“Almost every time she went to the hospital she had to advocate for herself, fight for something, shape or form in some way, just to get the right care,” he said.
An image of Henry Muhammed shows Dr. Susan Moore with Muhammed, her 19-year-old son. (Henry Muhammed via The New York Times)
In her battle with the coronavirus at IU Health North Hospital in Carmel, Indiana, Moore wrote in an update on Facebook that she eventually spoke with the hospital system’s chief medical officer, who assured her that she would receive better care and diversity training. have been detained. She got a new doctor and her pain was treated better, she wrote.
But even as things seemed to improve in the hospital, Moore still felt that the care was not great and that the medical staff were less responsive, said Muhammed, who spoke to her daily. While she didn’t really feel like she was healthy enough to be fired, she was eager to go home and take care of her parents, he said.
The hospital released her on December 7, he said, and she was sluggish and tired when she got home. The hospital called several times to check on her, he said, and when she didn’t respond, it sent an ambulance. His mother could barely walk and was breathing heavily when the ambulance arrived. She was taken to another hospital 12 hours after she was released from the previous hospital, she said on Facebook.
“I reached a temperature of 103 and my blood pressure plummeted to 80/60 with a heart rate of 132,” she wrote.
Moore described her care at the new hospital as compassionate, saying she was being treated for bacterial pneumonia in addition to COVID-19 pneumonia. However, her condition would deteriorate quickly. The last time Muhammed spoke to her, just before she was put on a ventilator, she coughed so bad she could barely speak, he said.
Doctors intubated her on Dec. 10, Muhammed said. The medical staff organized a Zoom call in her room, and more than a dozen family members spoke to her, hoping she could hear them even though she was unconscious, he said.
Last Friday, Moore had become 100 percent dependent on a ventilator for breathing, her son said, and doctors told him she might not make it. He visited her with his grandparents and told her that he loved her and should not worry about him.
“If you want to fight, now is the time to fight,” he recalled telling her. “But if you have to go, I understand.”
Two days later, Moore’s heart stopped beating.