SF Bay Area Hospitals face Fines

[AsahinaKimi]

Five Bay Area hospitals were among the dozen California medical centers fined by state health officials this week for violations serious enough to hurt or kill patients.

The Bay Are hospitals facing $50,000 fines include UCSF Medical Center, Kaiser Permanente in Vallejo, Sutter Delta Medical Center in Antioch, Alameda Hospital in Alameda and Dominican Hospital in Santa Cruz.

The hospitals have 10 days to appeal the fines, which range from $50,000 to $75,000, according to the state Department of Public Health.

Many of the fines involve leaving objects, like sponges, inside patients following surgery. Others were for mistakes in administering medications.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/chronrx/detail?entry_id=97161#ixzz1XUvzjDGY

[saras]

1. Here's the real link

http://www.cdph.ca.gov/Pages/PH11-038.aspx

In some cases, they didn't develop written policies to an acceptable degree. In others, existing policies were not followed in individual cases.

1. Alameda Hospital - insufficient written policy for administering meds.
2. Brotman Medical Center - failed to follow policy for fall prevention.
3. California Men’s Colony - insufficient written policy for administering meds.
4. Dominican Hospital - insufficient written policy for administering meds.
5. Emanuel Medical Center - failed to follow surgical policy
6. Kaiser Foundation Hospital & Rehabilitation Center - failed to follow surgical policy
7. LAC+USC Medical Center - insufficient written policy for administering meds.
8. Riverside Community Hospital - failed to follow surgical policy
9. Stanislaus Surgical Hospital - failed to follow surgical policy
10. Sutter Delta Medical Center - failed to follow policy for patient assessment
11. Torrance Memorial Medical Center - failed to follow surgical policy
12. UCSF Medical Center - failed to follow surgical policy

Do you have links to more specific information on the cases? Obviously only the surgical ones could have possibly been the ones leaving things in patients, but there's no data in either article to support this.

[AsahinaKimi]

2. Are you asking me?

I got the story from SFGate.com. What you see is what you get..I don't feel the need to follow up on stories like this because frankly if anyone wants to, they can do so, by themselves, as you obviously have.

[saras]

3. The information is actually in links AT the CDPH

Yep, specific details are available. Sorry I just didn't dig hard enough. Reports are available on the CDPH site, telling what they found in each case. The hospital links, which I thought just went to the hospital's website, actually go to the specific document recording the investigation. Really interesting reading if you're a procedures geek or interested in the real-world practice of medicine.