THE ACCOUNTABILITY SERIES: Poking Darkness With a Stick, Part 3
a.k.a. - The Holding OhioHealth Hospital Accountable Series
The Accountability Series is a call for change — a public record and a reminder that patients deserve to be heard. Healthcare accountability should be standard, not a battle that injured patients and their families are forced to fight, only to be dismissed and left to pick up the pieces alone.
Through this series, I’m opening a window into an ongoing campaign — it’s an invitation for hospital decision-makers to finally step up after more than four years of denying the abuse and injuries I sustained by one of their surgeons. I am drawing from my personal malpractice journey, yet it mirrors untold numbers of malpractice journeys where the injured have been and will be shut out and failed by rigid, inhumane brick wall systems.
OhioHealth is the responsible hospital corporation. I will address each email message to their “Leadership” teams, which includes their president and other top administrators. Copies may also be sent to employees, the media, lawyers, and patient advocates.
We’re all human, and injuries happen. Medical professionals need and deserve legal protection, but so do patients. This is about accountability and systemic reform, not a personal attack.
This is about addressing the imbalance of power and confronting hypocrisy.
Subject: Poking Darkness With a Stick, Part 3 - 9/16/25
Advocating for patient rights is a risky balancing act between being an advocate and losing pieces of myself that I’ve worked so hard to recover. Every utterance against injustice is like poking at Darkness with a stick, testing how far I’ve actually come on my healing journey. I expect (fingers crossed) I can outrun Darkness this time if it comes after me.
Why don’t I just let it go? Move on already!? Sometimes I do, but I never get far before I feel a tugging at my sleeve. Come this way. Come this way, it says. I’ve met several patient advocates along my journey, all of whom are victims or loved ones of victims who were badly harmed or killed by negligence. Advocacy chose us, not the other way around. I’ll know when I’m done by the ceasing of the tugging at my sleeve.
Dear OhioHealth Leadership Team:
I’m not done. It’s not because I don’t want to be.
Liz Florentino, Survivor on a Mission
Patient Rights Advocate
Author of Angels, Bullies, & Brick Walls: Lessons from Surviving Medical Malpractice
https://www.youtube.com/@survivoronamission
#ReformTortReform