Emergency Room

Kathleen "Kath" P. Collins, a dedicated nurse at Misericordia, Mercy Fitzgerald and St. Agnes hospitals and a woman who inspired others with her joy of living in the face of a deadly disease, died of cancer June 13. She was 57 and lived in Havertown. "Kathleen gratefully enjoyed her life, laughed often, had the greatest stories, gave of her heart, her spirit and her time to all who encountered her," her family wrote in an obituary. In her final days, she said, "I figured it all out. It's about friendship.

LAKEWOOD, N.J. - Somewhere in the crowd, his future hung in the balance. Signing deadline was minutes away. Jarred Cosart was blacked out from his own contract negotiations. As Cosart gunned down runners from rightfield during this 2008 American Legion game in Enid, Okla., Dad went to work. Shuttling between Phillies executives atop an upper-deck patio and Jarred's mother in the bleachers, Joe Cosart negotiated a contract. After plunging to the Phillies in the 38th round of the draft a few months earlier, Cosart was ready to start fresh at the University of Missouri.

BELLEVUE, Pa. - Officials at Allegheny General Hospital Suburban Campus near Pittsburgh have filed a notice with the state that its 344 employees could be laid off within 60 days. The 106-year-old hospital, part of the West Penn Allegheny Health System, plans to close its emergency room and stop admitting patients in August. The facility will still offer outpatient radiology, laboratory, dialysis and imaging services, and an urgent-care center will replace the emergency room. The hospital is in Bellevue, just west of the city.

Scott Zeigler was watching the Phillies when he heard the announcer say at the top of the eighth inning that "there's a cat out on the field. " "I thought it was some kind of animal," Zeigler said. But it wasn't. It was his stepson. Steve Consalvi, 17, got well more than his 15 minutes of fame when he dashed onto right field Monday night, darting through the outfield until he was felled by a policeman's Taser gun. Tuesday afternoon, Consalvi's mother and stepfather stood on their front porch on an otherwise sunny and peaceful afternoon, patiently taking questions from reporters about Consalvi's mystifying behavior, which ended with charges of defiant trespass, resisting arrest, and disorderly conduct.

Striking registered nurses and health professionals on Friday called on Temple University Hospital to document credentials of the 850 temporary workers recruited to tend to patients since the walkout began Wednesday. The union said it had received "dozens of reports" of "problems with patient care," Maureen May, president of the Temple Nurses Union, said at a briefing outside the hospital on North Broad Street. "We want the Department of Health to investigate," said Patricia Eakin, registered nurse in Temple Hospital's emergency room and statewide president of the Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals union, PASNAP.

The second of the three people charged with stealing a watch from Joaquin Rivera as the Puerto Rican community leader was dying in a Frankford hospital waiting room will plead guilty to misdemeanor theft charges. The plea agreement was announced yesterday by the prosecutor in Municipal Court during what was to have been a preliminary hearing for Jannira Walker, 21, and alleged accomplice Richard Alten, 45. Alten failed to show up for the hearing, and Judge Joseph J. O'Neill issued an order for his arrest.

A senior executive from Aria Health, owner of the Northeast Philadelphia hospital where Joaquin Rivera died in November as he waited for emergency treatment, said yesterday that staff did not follow company policy requiring periodic checks on patients in the waiting room. Chief operating officer Linde Finsrud Wilson, testifying at a City Council hearing on Rivera's death, said the hospital had since trained staff to keep better tabs on waiting patients. She said it also had added a second full-time security guard in the 25-seat waiting room, where Rivera's watch was stolen after he died.

Staff at Aria Health's Frankford campus violated hospital policy by not checking on Joaquin Rivera before he died in the emergency room in November, a top hospital official said yesterday at a City Council hearing held to probe the school guidance counselor's death. "The policy was in place but not adhered to," Linde Finsrud Wilson, chief operating officer of Aria Health, said during the three-hour session. Attorney Thomas Kline, who has been retained by Rivera's family to file a civil lawsuit against Aria Health System, said that Rivera, 63, was a victim of medical negligence.

A Maple Shade toddler saved his grandmother's life Friday with a call to 911. When Patricia Bolli started having a seizure, her 3-year-old grandson Jaden Bolli, the only other person in the house, applied his mother's recent lesson to dial 911 in an emergency. The elder Bolli, 54, is in stable condition at Kennedy University Hospital-Cherry Hill, where doctors are working on a diagnosis. "He's a very, very intelligent boy," Patricia Bolli said yesterday from her hospital room.

Twice, when an emergency-room nurse called out the name of Joaquin Rivera and he did not respond, she had no idea he'd already suffered a massive heart attack. The reason: The nurse did not venture beyond the waiting-room doorway and simply did not see him where he sat, unattended, for nearly an hour. That was among the findings made public yesterday after a state investigation into the treatment of Rivera, a 63-year-old guidance counselor who died Nov. 28 at Aria Health's Frankford campus.