About Us

The story behind Get Your Stuff Together, revolves around Without Consent, a feature screenplay written by Lion and the Rock’s Executive Producers, Janet Greenwald & Laura Greenwald.   

Jan and Laura, one of the only mother and daughter writing teams in the industry, wrote Without Consent after the circumstances surrounding the untimely death of Jan’s mother Elaine Sullivan, propelled the duo into the world of healthcare and politics as they fought to enact the lifesaving Next of Kin healthcare laws in California and Illinois.

From this story, which was inspired by actual events, came three healthcare laws in two states, the Next of Kin Education Project, an organization dedicated to patient and family safety, a 1.5 million hit blog and their books At Your Fingertips and Get Your Stuff Together.

Does a hospital have the right to treat a patient who can’t communicate, without consulting her family, her doctor, or her medical history?

For six days?

One hospital did and it cost a 71 year old woman her life.

Can her daughter and granddaughter keep the same thing from happening to anyone else?  

The Story Behind Without Consent

This story is very personal to us, because it’s based on our actual experiences.

We found out the hard way how vital it is to keep your family safe no matter where they are – even when they’re in the hospital.  In fact it’s imperative to have that part of your lives absolutely organized, armor-plated, undefeatable and secure.

We’ll never forget the day we realized it wasn’t.

Elaine Sullivan was an active seventy-one year old living on her own in Chicago.  One day while getting ready to take a bath, she slipped and fell, striking her head and mouth on the side of the tub. Her neighbors realized they hadn’t seen her all day and called the paramedics, who went in and found her, conscious, but unable to speak.

She had previously been a patient at that same hospital, she had Medicare, supplemental insurance and everything she needed. Or so we thought.

Even though she was stable, injuries to her mouth made her unable to speak for herself. Over the next few days, after a series of serious medical errors and a critical drug interaction, her condition worsened.

Elaine Sullivan was my mother.

Despite the fact that the hospital had my daughter Laura’s and my contact information for our home in Los Angeles, the hospital neglected to call us for 6 1/2 days. By the time they finally called to tell us that she’d been hospitalized, she was in critical condition and we weren’t able to get to her before she died, unnecessarily and completely alone.

As we found out later, she died because the hospital gave her medication that caused a fatal interaction with a prescription she was already taking.

Why?

Because the doctors treating her didn’t have her medical or prescription drug history at their fingertips.

One ridiculously simple thing would have prevented her death.

An ICE Contact.

An in case of emergency contact that you place on your smartphone or in your wallet or purse, that details your emergency contacts along with your basic medical, prescription drug and allergy information.

But, as vital as ICE Contacts are, we quickly realized that having one for every member of your family is only a partial solution.  

No ICE Contact in the world will MAKE hospitals call a patient’s family.

Laura and I felt strongly about finding a way to keep the same thing from happening to anyone else’s family, ever again.  Being writers – we came up with a two pronged approach.

First we wrote and enacted a law – three in fact – to protect hospital patients in California and Illinois.

Second, we did what we do best.  Turned our story into a screenplay that we hope will touch and heal families all over the world.  It’s called Without Consent and you’ll find a video about the screenplay, on this page.

Since Mom/Grandma’s death, through our blog, our book At Your Fingertips and our revolutionary 2 Minute ICE Contact, we’ve become the foremost ICE educators in America. The moral of the story is that you never know what piece of information, no matter how small, might save the life of someone you love.  

Elaine Sullivan’s story has taken on an even greater importance these past few years, now that the pandemic has literally kept families of hospitalized COVID patients away from their bedsides — cut off from the people they love, just when they need them the most.  

That’s why we published Alone Together, a guide filled with tools and resources to help families stay connected with hospitalized loved ones.

Share Our Free Book With The People You Love!