Recordings Paint Picture Of Hospital Driven To Keep Vegetative Patient Alive For Year To Avoid Federal Scrutiny
ProPublica reports on the case of Darryl Young, who never woke up from heart transplant surgery at Newark Beth Israel Medical Center in Sept. 2018. Audio recordings reveal conversations of how his medical team strategized to keep him alive over concerns about the transplant program’s survival rate. Other hospital news comes out of Maine, California, Georgia and Colorado.
ProPublica:
“It’s Very Unethical”: Audio Shows Hospital Kept Vegetative Patient On Life Support To Boost Survival Rates
The recordings show that the transplant team was fixated on keeping him alive, rather than his quality of life or his family’s wishes, because of worries about the transplant program’s survival rate, the proportion of people undergoing transplants who are still alive a year after their operations. Federal regulators rely on this statistic to evaluate — and sometimes penalize — transplant programs, giving hospitals across the country a reputational and financial incentive to game it. (Chen, 10/3)
The Washington Post:
A Hospital’s ‘Wall Of Shame’ Used Private Records To Mock Disabled Patients. Now Officials Are Apologizing.
MyKayla McCann was shocked by what she discovered at her first day of work. Using confidential medical records, her new co-workers at St. Mary’s Regional Medical Center in Lewiston, Maine, had created an ersatz collage that was hidden on the inside of a cabinet door and labeled it the “Wall of Shame.” The records belonged to the hospital’s physically and mentally disabled patients, and described their “sexual activity, genital dysfunction, bowel movements, bodily odors and other personal maladies,” according to a 2018 report from Maine’s Human Rights Commission, which labeled the collage “objectively offensive.” (Noori Farzan, 10/4)
The New York Times:
High Medical Bills Set Up Major Legal Showdown In California
In a less than a week, Sutter Health, a sprawling system of 24 hospitals and 5,500 doctors, will face a court trial over accusations that it used its dominance in Northern California to stifle competition and force patients to pay higher medical bills. Sutter, the nonprofit hospital group in Sacramento, with operating revenues of $13 billion, has long been viewed as the classic example of a hospital system that got way too big. Its network of hospitals and services enabled it to essentially corner much of the market, corralling insurers and patients so that they couldn’t go elsewhere for less expensive or better treatment, according to a lawsuit filed by Xavier Becerra, the California state attorney general. (Abelson, 10/3)
Sacramento Bee:
Kaiser: Sacramento Data Breach Affects About 1,000 Patients
Kaiser Permanente said Thursday that a data breach had left personal information on 990 Sacramento-area patients exposed to an unknown and unauthorized individual for about 13 hours. ...In a letter to Kaiser members, issued Sept. 27, Anderson explained that the unauthorized individual had access to a Sacramento-area provider’s email account, and data in that email account included a combination or some of the following: date or dates of service, age, date of birth, gender, provider name, provider comments, payer name, diagnosis, medical history, benefit information, insurance coverage status, treatment procedure and service provided. (Anderson, 10/3)
Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
New Georgia Hospital Financial Disclosure Reports Reveal Disparities
The state Legislature required nonprofit hospitals to begin posting a raft of financial information on their websites this week, and some of it is eye-opening at a time when some facilities say they are struggling to get by. Northside Hospital CEO Bob Quattrocchi makes $4.9 million including salary and other benefits. Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta CEO Donna Hyland made $1.9 million last year. (Hart, 10/3)
Kaiser Health News:
Why Hospitals Are Getting Into The Housing Business
Legally and morally, hospitals cannot discharge patients if they have no safe place to go. So patients who are homeless, frail or live alone, or have unstable housing, can occupy hospital beds for weeks or months — long after their acute medical problem is resolved. For hospitals, it means losing money because a patient lingering in a bed without medical problems doesn’t generate much, if any, income. Meanwhile, acutely ill patients may wait days in the ER to be moved to a floor because a hospital’s beds are full. ... To address the problem, hospitals from Baltimore to St. Louis to Sacramento, Calif., are exploring ways to help patients find a home. With recent federal policy changes that encourage hospitals to allocate charity dollars for housing, many hospitals realize it’s cheaper to provide a month of housing than to keep patients for a single night. (Hawryluk, 10/4)
