DETROIT – A new whistleblower lawsuit is making some disturbing claims about the cleanliness of a Detroit hospital for women.
The suit centers on Harper Hutzel Hospital in Midtown.
It alleges the hospital system and cleaning company refuse to sanitize operating rooms properly and will not provide the proper cleaning supplies and more.
The complaint is as thick as a phone book and has nearly as many charges.
Attorney Azzam Elder told Local 4 Thursday (June 30) that two housekeeping employees complained to the hospital that they didn’t have the proper cleaning materials and that the hospital’s most important and sensitive areas needed better cleaning than they were allowed.
Denise Bonds on the right with the mask and Shenesia Rhodes on the left, seen in the video player above, were more than longtime cleaning staffers.
In 22 years on the job, both became union stewards. Now they say the hospital recently fired them.
“We wasn’t safe, said Rhodes. “We had co-workers calling that didn’t want to have a voice because they were afraid of getting fired.”
They said in 2019, when DMC’s Tenet Healthcare owners installed Crothall Healthcare as the cleaning subcontractor, hospital cleanliness became dire and unsanitary.
“I just can’t understand a company that we would think that would be on the same page as us was totally against us when we spoke up,” Rhodes said.
The lawsuit claims the Dallas-based hospital system is running the place on the cheap, and as proof, the duo offers picture after picture of places like operating suite rooms where they perform C-sections on pregnant women.
They say the bed seen in the video player above is a bed improperly and insufficiently cleaned.
They say it’s supposed to be disassembled and cleaned and put back together, a procedure called terminal cleaning.
“The way it’s being run basically shocks the conscience, Elder said. “This would not be tolerated in Dallas, where Tenet is headquartered, or any wealthy city, and I don’t think that should be tolerated here in the state of Michigan.”
Crothall Healthcare sent out a statement:
