The U.S. Indian Health Service provides medical care to 2.2 million Native Americans around the country. Sadly, the level of medical care and the conditions at these IHS hospitals and clinics are often substandard.
A report released last week proposed sanctions against the IHS and one of its hospitals in its nationwide network of medical facilities. Among the facilities where the medical care was noted to be especially poor was the IHS hospital located on the Rosebud Sioux reservation in South Dakota. A young patient there was not properly monitored and attempted to commit suicide while hospitalized, and another patient died from a heart attack the very next day again because of improper monitoring by the medical staff. Those, however, are just two examples among many.
IHS now has to submit a plan to remedy these most recent problems or risk losing federal funding. You can read more about this story here.