For now, Medicare sticks with Mount Carmel

Mount Carmel West hospital will not lose eligibility to receive payments for Medicare patients on Friday, as the agency that oversees the government-funded health-insurance program continues to review a recent inspection report, an official at the agency said Thursday.

The federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) had said on Jan. 30 that the facility would not be paid for services to Medicare patients admitted on or after Friday if the hospital

did not remedy medicationservice deficiencies that posed an immediate threat to patient health and safety.

The notification was made after Mount Carmel Health System had publicly revealed that 34 patients in intensive care had received excessive doses of painkillers going back to at least 2015.

The amounts were potentially fatal for 28, and all but one were at Mount Carmel West in Franklinton, the system has said.

Mount Carmel St. Ann’s hospital in Westerville, where one patient received care, faces termination of Medicare participation on Sunday.

The CMS did not address that date on Thursday.

If privileges are lost for Medicare, which insures the elderly, the hospitals also would lose payments for services to patients receiving Medicaid, who are

low income, according to the state department that oversees that program.

Reports from initial inspections, performed by the Ohio Department of Health on behalf of CMS, said the hospitals failed to ensure that a system was in place to monitor and prevent the override of warnings and prior-pharmacy approvals to access large doses of central-nervous-system medications from an automated dispensing system.

Some central-nervous-system medications, inspection reports indicate, include the opioids fentanyl and hydromorphone (Dilaudid) and the sedative midazolam (Versed). All three are among the medications that the inspection reports say were accessed by override in 24 of the 28 patient cases detailed.

Mount Carmel has submitted to authorities its plans to correct deficiencies, and follow-up inspections were subsequently completed, officials have said.

Mount Carmel has said that Dr. William Husel ordered each of the 34 prescriptions at issue.

He was fired in December and 23 employees, including nurses, pharmacists and mangers, were placed on paid leave, the health system has said.

Husel, 43, of Liberty Township near Dublin, also faces loss of his medical license, and lawenforcement authorities are investigating.