Video of dying patient being ignored spurs changes at Brooklyn hospital

New York City's Health and Hospitals Corporation has agreed to increase the monitoring of patients at a public psychiatric ward in Brooklyn. The agreement came after a videotape surfaced showing a patient collapsing onto a floor at Kings County Hospital Center after waiting nearly 24 hours to be seen, and lying there for about an hour before somebody came to her aid. The agency agreed to the stepped-up monitoring to settle a lawsuit filed by the New York Civil Liberties Union and others. The lawsuit accuses the public hospital of keeping psychiatric patients in filthy conditions, systematically neglecting them, and drugging them into submission.