Some Hospitals Call 911 to Save Their Patients By REED ABELSON

The West Texas Hospital near Abilene. Nurses there called 911 because no doctors were present to treat Steve Spivey when he had breathing problems after spinal surgery.

This was under the business section....not News of the Weird.

clipped from http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/02/business/02alarm.html?ex=1333166400&en=db20769420957f09&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss patients at some hospitals may find the staff resorting to what someone might do at home in a crisis: call 911 for an ambulance. recently in Texas, where a 44-year-old man named Steve Spivey developed breathing problems after spine surgery. No physician was working there when the staff first recognized he was in trouble. They phoned 911, and he was taken to a nearby full-service hospital, where he was pronounced dead a short time later. The episode occurred at a small hospital that is owned and run by doctors — one of roughly 140 such hospitals But the Texas case, and others like it, have invited new scrutiny from regulators and members of Congress about these hospitals’ ability to care for patients who suffer complications after their operations. A similar case involved an 88-year-old woman two years ago at a small doctor-owned hospital in Portland, Ore., where the nurses called 911 after she was given too much pain medicine following spine surgery. She, too, later died.