Grave problems persist at Vatican hospital
As facility expanded services and tried to turn a profit, children bore brunt of sometimes shoddy care
When doctors and nurses at the Vatican’s showcase children’s hospital complained in 2014 that corners were being cut and medical protocols ignored, the Vatican responded by ordering up a secret in-house investigation. The diagnosis: The original mission of “the pope’s hospital” had been lost and was “today more aimed at profit than on caring for children.”
Three years later, an Associated Press investigation found that Bambino Gesu (Baby Jesus) Pediatric Hospital did indeed shift its focus in ways big and small under its past administration, which governed from 2008-15. As the hospital expanded services and tried to make a moneylosing Vatican enterprise turn a profit, children sometimes paid the price. Among the AP’s findings:
Overcrowding and poor hygiene contributed to deadly infection, including one 21-month superbug outbreak in the cancer ward that killed eight children.
To save money, disposable equipment and other materials were at times used improperly.
Doctors were so pressured to maximize operating-room turnover that patients were sometimes brought out of anesthesia too quickly.
Some of the issues had been identified in 2014 by the Vatican-authorized task force of current and former hospital doctors, nurses, administrators and outsiders, who spent three months gathering information and interviewing staff offcampus.
Vincenzo Di Ciommo Laurora, a retired Bambino Gesu epidemiologist, described the hospital’s past culture this way: “The more you do to a patient, the more money you bring in. You have to produce, produce, produce.”
Bambino Gesu denied the AP’s findings in a statement Monday, calling the AP report a “hoax” and threatening legal action. It said the AP report “contained false, dated and gravely defamatory accusations and conjectures that had been denied by an independent report of the Holy See.”
Arthur Caplan, head of medical ethics at NYU School of Medicine, said the problems detailed by the AP were extremely worrying if true: “These are inexcusable violations of children’s rights.” He called for an “independent audit by child health care experts not connected in any way to either the Vatican or even Italy.”
Founded in 1869 to treat poor children, Bambino Gesu (Baby Jesus) is now the main pediatric hospital serving southern Italy. In 2015, the 607-bed facility performed over 26,000 surgical procedures — more than a third of all children’s operations nationwide. Perched on a hillside just up the road from Vatican City, the hospital’s main campus enjoys extraterritorial status, making the Italian taxpayer funded institution immune to the surprise inspections that other Italian hospitals undergo. Employees who spoke to the AP requested anonymity, fearing they would lose their jobs. Out of concern for the children, they said, they broke what the hospital’s union has called the “omerta,” the Italian code of silence.
Staff members told the AP that some of the conditions they first reported in early 2014 have improved since the administration changed in early 2015. The new leadership, they said, focuses less on volume and has more respect for following protocols.
And the hospital’s main union said problems remain. “Ten years ago, the ERs were jammed and they still are. Ten years ago, patients waited on stretchers and they still do. Ten years ago you entered with one illness and left with two hospital infections, and still do,” it wrote in July 2016. “What has changed in 10 years? The machines are better, the pharmaceuticals are better, but the level of care is not.”
Within weeks of the task force report being delivered to the Vatican in April 2014, member Coleen McMahon — an American nurse — grew impatient and emailed the group’s coordinator that she planned to press for action. He told her to stand down.
“We are dealing with the Secretary of State of His Holyness (sic), the man that God Himself appointed to lead His Church,” Dr. Steven Masotti emailed her back. “Our job is over!”
But Pope Francis himself used a Christmas 2016 audience with thousands of hospital employees and patients last year to warn caregivers against falling prey to corruption, which he called the “greatest cancer” that can strike a hospital.
“Bambino Gesu has had a history that hasn’t always been good,” the pope said, citing the temptation for doctors and nurses to become businessmen. “Look at the children,” Francis said in Italian, pointing to the young patients gathered at his feet in the Vatican auditorium. “And let each one of us think: ‘Can I make corrupt business off these children? No!’ ”