Red Flag Warnings Ignored: Patients Who Use Drugs at Risk as Their Chief Complaint is Not Heard

Ignoring serious medical complaints, especially in vulnerable patients, is reckless and delays proper diagnosis and care

SANTA BARBARA, CA, UNITED STATES, March 27, 2025 /EINPresswire.com/ -- “Emergency room personnel chose their professions. If they can’t keep their ears open for the poor, the less fortunate, the homeless, and those who abuse drugs, they should be doing something else for a living,” states Greg Vigna, MD, JD, national neurological injury attorney.

Dr. Greg Vigna, national neurological injury attorney, states, “Patients who present to emergency rooms with serious medical conditions need to be listened to in order to receive timely diagnosis and treatment. We are seeing cases where patients with epidural abscesses, caused by intravenous drug use, present with complaints clearly pointing this diagnosis, yet are ignored by doctors, nurses, and other medical providers due to lack of compassion and neglect of their responsibilities."

What does the research paper titled “I don’t even want to go to the doctor when I get sick now: Healthcare experience and discrimination reported by people who use drugs, Arizona 2019,” published in the International Journal of Drug Policy (International Journal of Drug Policy 93(2021)103112) report?:

“The three major experiences reported by those seeking healthcare in the past year included 1) medical mistreatment (not addressing the primary medical complaint, providing wrong or inadequate treatment), 2) social mistreatment (disapproval, embarrassment, shaming) and 3) abusive behavior (verbal and physical) by healthcare providers.

In our study, participants reported that healthcare providers prioritized substance use as the primary and sometimes singular medical issue to address, even though none of the participants sought medical care to address their substance use.

Reported medical mistreatment included not addressing the primary medical complaint, providing wrong or inadequate treatment, and refusal of appropriate medication. Participants reported perceived healthcare provider fixation on their substance use, which in turn appeared to dictate whether and how their health was addressed and managed by the healthcare provider.”

Read the article: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0955395921000116

Dr. Vigna continues, “Not addressing the primary medical complaint is so fundamental to the practice of medicine that a failure to do so is reckless and dangerous. These individuals should not be working in the emergency room and need to find another profession."

Dr. Vigna concludes, “As a spinal cord injury physician, I have provided care to patients who were gravely disabled due to delays in diagnoses by medical providers who simply didn’t care to listen to the complaints of the patient.”

Greg Vigna, MD, JD, is a national malpractice attorney and an expert in spinal cord medicine, brain injury, catastrophic orthopedic injuries, and wound care. He is available for legal consultation for families and patients who have suffered injury from delays in diagnosis. The Vigna Law Group, along with Ben C. Martin, Esq., of the Ben Martin Law Group, a Dallas, Texas national pharmaceutical injury law firm, jointly prosecute hospital, physician, and nursing home neglect cases nationwide.

Greg Vigna, MD, JD
Vigna Law Group
+1 817-809-9023
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