A Black physician who was hospitalized for COVID-19 accused her doctor of mistreatment in a Facebook video shortly before she died.
Dr. Susan Moore was admitted to IU Health North Hospital in Carmel, Indiana, after being diagnosed with COVID-19 on Nov. 29. She died on Dec. 20 at the age of 52 due to coronavirus complications.
On Dec. 4, Moore uploaded a seven-and-a-half-minute Facebook video detailing the alleged mistreatment she experienced under the care of Dr. Eric Bannec.
Moore claimed that Bannec tried to discharge her from the hospital too soon and initially denied her pain medication for her neck. She said she had to beg for Remdesivir, an antiviral drug used to treat COVID-19, as well as a CT scan, which revealed mediastinal lymphadenopathy, or a swelling of the lymph nodes in the chest.
Bannec allegedly told Moore she was not short of breath and did not qualify for Remdesivir after receiving two treatments, and that he didn’t feel comfortable prescribing her narcotics for her neck pain. He allegedly told her, “You should just go home right now.”
“I was crushed,” Moore said in her video. “He made me feel like I was a drug addict. And he knew I was a physician. I don’t take narcotics. I was hurting.”
Moore said that after her CT scan revealed fluid in her lungs and swollen lymph nodes, her doctors agreed to treat her pain.
“You have to show proof that you have something wrong with you in order for you to get the medicine,” she said. “I maintain if I was white, I wouldn’t have to go through that. And that man [Bannec] never came back and apologized.”
Moore also said she had to wait several hours to receive pain medication, and that her nurse dismissed her pain when she complained about the delay.
“That is not how you treat patients, period,” Moore said in her video. “I don’t trust this hospital, and I’m asking to be transferred.”
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Moore claimed that Bannec also told her he would send her home at 10pm on a Saturday if she stayed in the hospital.
“This is how Black people get killed, when you send them home and they don’t know how to fight for themselves,” Moore said in the video. “I had to talk to somebody—maybe the media, somebody—to let people know how I’m being treated up in this place.”
“He didn’t want the Black doctor to have no medicine, nothing,” Moore added.
Several of Bannec’s patients have accused him of mistreatment over the past four years. In a one-star review from 2016 on Vitals, one patient wrote, “I’ve personally witnessed and also heard of numerous disturbing interactions from this individual. One example is him yelling at a patient, insisting that they stop fighting their illness and die.”
Another user in 2019 awarded Bannec one star and wrote, “He told me that my numbers in my blood work looked like something he would see from an alcoholic on a Saturday night in the ER. I do not drink alcohol, and haven’t for many years because of my medical condition, and the medication I have to take. He refused to believe me, or refer me to anyone else.”
Other users on WebMD and Google have bombarded Bannec with one-star reviews in the days following Moore’s death.
“This ‘doctor’ killed another doctor,” one WebMD user wrote. “He refused to give her the treatment she needed to live. Here is her video. SHAME ON YOU, ERIC BANNEC!!!! SHAME ON. YOU.”
A GoFundMe was launched on Tuesday to raise money for Moore’s family. The fundraiser states that Moore was the sole provider for her 19-year-old son and parents, both of whom have dementia. In 20 hours, the GoFundMe has raised more than $41,000 at the time of this writing, surpassing its $30,000 goal.
A spokesperson from IU Health provided the following statement to the Daily Dot:
“IU Health respects and upholds patient privacy and cannot comment on a specific patient, their medical history or conditions. As an organization committed to equity and reducing racial disparities in healthcare, we take accusations of discrimination very seriously and investigate every allegation.
Treatment options are often agreed upon and reviewed by medical experts from a variety of specialties, and we stand by the commitment and expertise of our caregivers and the quality of care delivered to our patients every day.”
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