STATE TELLS LOCAL HOSPS: HEAL THY SELVES
19 violations in probe, from deadly surgery mishaps to doc ‘sex abuse’
State health officials found 19 instances of safety or security lapses that put New York City hospital patients in “immediate jeopardy,” including failure to investigate sexual-abuse allegations, sending a suicidal patient home, where he killed himself, and poor infection control.
The state uncovered the errors from January 2015 through last month during inspections at the hospitals, including top-rated NewYorkPresbyterian and at five in the publicly-run Health + Hospitals system, according to records obtained from the state Health Department through a Freedom of Information Law request.
An “immediate jeopardy” situation is likely to cause serious injury, harm, impairment or death to a patient, according to the DOH. It must be corrected immediately or the hospital can be booted from the government’s Medicare program.
The hospitals cited by the state include:
The Manhattan Eye, Ear & Throat division of Lenox Hill Hospital, on East 77th Street in Manhattan, where two patients died after minor surgery. One patient, identified in court papers as Norine Starr, suffered a heart-rate drop in an October 2016 cataract operation, during which investigators found she was not properly monitored and needed CPR because she had no pulse.
DOH records show a 15minute gap between the time Starr’s heart rate crashed to zero until resuscitation began.
The surgeon said she didn’t know the patient’s vital signs were changing and didn’t hear any warning alarms go off, records show.
“I left the room and I went on to the next case,” the doctor told investigators.
The family of the 65-yearold Starr, who lived in Brooklyn and was a sales rep in the garment industry, filed a lawsuit against the hospital, surgeon and others last month.
Beth Teitelbaum, a close friend of Starr’s, said Lenox Hill representatives apologized in a meeting with her.
“But an apology doesn’t bring somebody’s life back,” Teitelbaum said. “For such an easy thing, it shouldn’t have turned out the way it did.”
Another woman’s heart rate dropped during hand surgery in August 2016 and the sur-
geon said he was unawareaware of the change. “I was concentrating on the hand,” he told probers. The DOH fined Lenox Hill $10,000.
A hospital spokeswoman said it had “expressed our sincere condolences to both families” and that a “corrective action plan was developed, implemented and accepted by DOH representatives the same day of their site visit in late October 2016.”
Mount Sinai Hospital, on the Upper East Side, for failing to properly investigate the claims of two women who said they were sexually abused by ER doctor David NewmanNewman, who eventually pleaded guilty to attacking four patients and is serving two years in prison.
Police busted Newman in January 2016 after a woman said the doctor drugged her in the ER and then pleasured himself.
State probers found that two Mount Sinai staffers were notified of one abuse incident on Sept. 28, 2015, and that the “allegation was not investigated at the time of the alleged occurrence.”
“This placed all patients at risk for potential abuse,” the state found.
The state lifted the immediate jeopardy declaration within hours when the hospital showed it had educated its staff. It fined Mount Sinai $2,000.
Lincoln Hospital, a city-run Bronx trauma center, sent home 25-year-old Kareem Cooley in August 2016. He had been in the ER after he tried to jump off a building. After two days, the hospital discharged Cooley and told him to go to a walk-in clinic. Instead, he killed himself.
The hospital staff failed to do a suicide risk evaluation and check a city-wide hospital data- basebase, which would have shown he had previously been hospitalized at Bellevue after jumping in front of a train, records show.
“You don’t know what it’s like here. We can’t admit everyone. We see so many patients every day. We don’t even behave like doctors here. We function more like social workers than doctors,” one staffer told probers, records show.
New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center, in Washington Heights, Manhattan where inspectors found doctors and nurses in the pediat- ric operating rooms in December 2015 who had hair sticking out of surgical garb and an anesthesiologist who adjusted an airway hose attached to a patient without using gloves, both potential infection risks, documents show.
“It concerns me that every day in hospitals all across the city and everywhere it’s the norm now to see a disregard for precautions that used to be adhered to,” said Betsy McCaughey, a hospital-safety advocate. “Hospital infections are one of the biggest killers in the United States.”