Doctors Community Hospital Fined for Failure to Report Patient Incidents
By Catherine D. Bertram, Esquire
According to an article by Lisa Rein in the Washington Post, Doctors Community Hospital, in Lanham, Maryland was recently fined by Maryland Department of Health officials for failing to notify them, as required by state law, that one patient recently died and at least seven others suffered serious injuries last year as a result of mistakes by the hospital's medical staff.
According to Ms. Rein's article, "Doctors Community Hospital paid the $30,000 fine last month for violating a Maryland law that requires hospitals to report serious medical errors. State officials agreed to reduce a proposed penalty of $95,000 as long as the hospital uses the remaining $65,000 to develop a patient safety program."
"We expect errors to occur," said Wendy Kronmiller, director of the state Office of Health Care Quality. "But we expect systems in place to catch them. What we found at Doctors is that the systems essentially didn't exist."
The Hospital Administration acknowledged their failure to comply with the law and promised to "sharpen the hospital's focus on patient safety."
"Our biggest challenge is making sure that someone is stepping back and saying, 'This isn't acceptable. I'm going to focus on dealing with this issue,' " Scott Gregerson, the hospital's vice president for strategy, said Friday. "Everybody in the institution needs a fundamental understanding of what is an error and what are the state's expectations for reporting."
It is not clear whether or not the patients or their families were told about these mistakes that resulted in death or serious injury.
According to the article, "Maryland hospitals last year reported 182 "preventable" errors. Health experts have dubbed them "never events" because they are never supposed to happen. The state does not name individual hospitals or patients, but last year 15 hospitals with 100 to 200 beds, including Doctors, reported a total of 44 mistakes that led to death or serious injury, most from falls."
The errors reporting included, a "36-hour delay in giving fluids to a woman admitted to Doctors' emergency in February 2008 with uncontrollable nausea and vomiting. According to state records, the woman became so dehydrated that her blood pressure spiked, putting her at risk of a stroke. She was transferred to the intensive care unit, where she eventually recovered. The hospital did not identify the error internally and did no follow-up, records show."
"The patient who died was a 46-year-old man who was admitted in January 2008 with a severe blood stream infection and liver disease that caused him to be confused, records show. A nurse's entry in the records says he was out of bed and sitting on the floor. The nurse put him back in bed, but he complained of a severe headache. Shortly after that, the nurse could not wake him. A CT scan revealed bleeding in his brain from a fall. He died the next morning. Records show the hospital failed to identify the fall, did not investigate and failed to report the death to the state.
"The patient fell at the hospital, exactly where medical attention should have been most available and where it did not occur," Kronmiller said."
"In another case, records show, doctors did not properly perform a knee replacement on a 58-year-old woman admitted in June 2008. They realized the error and operated again to fix it. But the physician discharge summary indicated no complications, and nowhere was the second procedure noted or discussed, records show."
"In March 2008, a man with dangerously low blood pressure and a low white blood cell count who was having trouble breathing was admitted to the intensive care unit at 10 p.m. But his blood pressure was not checked again for more than eight hours, at which point he was in acute distress. The nurse's overnight notes indicate only that at 2 a.m. the man was in "no acute distress," records show."
If you suspect that you or a family member suffered serious harm as a result of the error of the hospital or a healthcare provider you can contact us to discuss the matter. Our firm specializes in serious medical malpractice cases. Click here to send us an email or call Catherine Bertram at (202) 463-3030.