Despite Safety Violations Linked To Deaths, Psychiatric Hospitals Remain Fully Accredited By National Watchdog
The Joint Commission, a nonprofit private body authorized by the government to review hospital performance, has long held an accrediting monopoly. It's in charge of inspecting nearly 90 percent of the country's psychiatric hospitals. But it revokes or denies accreditation to only a very small percentage of them. Other news on safety and quality comes out of Texas and Maryland.
The Wall Street Journal:
Psychiatric Hospitals With Safety Violations Still Get Accreditation
More than 100 psychiatric hospitals have remained fully accredited by the nation’s major hospital watchdog despite serious safety violations that include lapses linked to the death, abuse or sexual assault of patients, a database investigation by The Wall Street Journal has found. The Joint Commission, an Oakbrook Terrace, Ill., nonprofit that evaluates most of the nation’s hospitals, revoked or denied full accreditation to fewer than 1% of psychiatric hospitals it oversaw in fiscal 2014 and 2015, the latest date for which detailed federal data is available. State inspectors found about 16% of those hospitals each year, or about 140 institutions total, operated with such severe safety violations they could put federal funding at risk. (Armour, 12/26)
The Wall Street Journal:
Dallas Hospital Amassed A Series Of Violations But Kept Accreditation
In March 2015, the federal government told Timberlawn Behavioral Health System that it was planning to cut off its funding because it was unsafe. The Dallas hospital had amassed 19 violations in 2014 and 2015, according to state inspection records. One patient had reported being raped by another, and an unsupervised suicidal woman hanged herself. The state had proposed a $1 million fine and revocation of the hospital’s license. (Armour, 12/26)
Stat:
NIH Hospital's Pipes Harbored Bacteria That Infected Patients
Patients were infected with antibiotic-resistant bacteria living in the plumbing of the National Institutes of Health’s hospital in Bethesda, Md., contributing to at least three deaths in 2016. A study published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine found that, from 2006 to 2016, at least 12 patients at the NIH Clinical Center, which provides experimental therapies and hosts research trials, were infected with Sphingomonas koreensis, an uncommon bacteria. The paper, written by NIH researchers, suggests that the infections came from contaminated water pipes, where the bacteria may have been living since as early as 2004, soon after construction of a new clinical center building. (Swetlitz, 12/26)
