Video of Dying Mental Patient Being Ignored Spurs Changes at Brooklyn Hospital.

New York City's Health and Hospitals Corporation agreed on Tuesday 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 after waiting nearly 24 hours to be seen, and lying there for about an hour while hospital workers did nothing for her. The patient soon died. The agency agreed to the stepped-up monitoring to settle a lawsuit filed by the New York Civil Liberties Union and others. The lawsuit, filed a year ago in federal court in Brooklyn, accuses the public hospital, Kings County Hospital Center, of keeping psychiatric patients in filthy conditions, systematically neglecting them and drugging them into submission. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]