I-Team Blotter
Medical Board Suspends License Of Doctor Charged With Sexual Assault
Theresa Sullivan Barger reports
Nursing Homes Face Fines For Resident Injuries
Blumenthal Sponsors Bill To Protect Patients From Unsafe Medical Devices
Theresa Sullivan Barger reports
St. Francis Hospital Oncologist Fined
Theresa Sullivan Barger reports
Cromwell, Milford Nursing Homes Among Six Penalized By DPH
Kids Without Health Insurance At 6%, Beat National Rate
Theresa Sullivan Barger reports
Mental Health Facility Cited For Inadequate Care
Westport Plastic Surgeon Fined $25,000
Report: Troubled Teens Dumped In Alternative, Adult Ed Programs
Eye Surgery Centers In Waterford, Bridgeport Fined
Theresa Sullivan Barger reports
Medicaid May Require Approval For Some Cancer Drugs
Four Nursing Homes Face DPH Fines For Care Lapses
Patient Safety Advocates Start New England Watchdog Group
Darien Pediatrician Fined, Reprimanded
Westport Plastic Surgeon Faces Discipline
Hospital Errors Persist, State Probes Rare
by Lisa Chedekel | Jan 29, 2012 9:00 pm | Comments (10)
Incidents of pressure ulcers, wrong-site surgeries and other surgical errors reported by Connecticut hospitals have increased in the last five years, despite myriad efforts to curb them, a new state report shows.
At the same time, state health department investigations of many hospital adverse events, such as patient injuries from falls, perforations resulting in disability, and death or serious injury due to surgery, have been rare, data in the report shows. For example, of 196 cases reported since 2007 in which patients were injured by a perforation during a colonoscopy or other procedure, the Department of Public Health (DPH) investigated just 20, or one in 10 cases.
The new Adverse Event Report, prepared by the DPH, marks the first time that acute-care hospitals and other medical facilities have been publicly identified by name, as they report errors that caused harm to patients.
The five hospitals with the highest rate of adverse events in 2010, calculated per 100,000 inpatient days, were: New Milford Hospital (21.4), the Hospital of St. Raphael in New Haven (19.2), Sharon Hospital (17.2), Johnson Memorial in Stafford Springs (17), and William W. Backus in Norwich (16.2). Other hospitals, including the Hospital of Central Connecticut and Saint Vincent’s Medical Center, had above-average rates of errors over the seven-year period from 2004-2010.
Teen Births: Nearly One-Half To Hispanics
by Magaly Olivero | Jan 24, 2012 8:00 pm | Comments (2)
Yanisha Claudio, 15, of Hartford, tenderly swaddled three-week-old Jordan, hoping he wouldn’t wake up. “He was crying until four o’clock in the morning,” said the weary Bulkeley High School freshman.
It’s been a tough year for Claudio, whose boyfriend broke up with her after a trip to the emergency room confirmed she was more than five months pregnant. At home for now, Claudio juggles the demands of being a mother and a student with help from a daily tutor, a case worker who visits weekly, and the baby’s grandmother, a former teen mother herself.
“I never thought this would happen to me,” said Claudio. “I don’t know anything about being a mother.”
While teen pregnancy rates have declined nationwide and in Connecticut, statistics and interviews show an intergenerational cycle of children-bearing-children puts Hispanic teens in Connecticut at risk of giving birth once, or even twice, before their twenties.
Hispanic teen birth rates in Connecticut are 8.5 times higher than whites and almost double that of African Americans for girls ages 15 to 19. Of the 2,626 teen births in 2009, almost half – 1,277 - were to Hispanics, according to data from the state Department of Public Health.
Of the 22 births to teen moms ages 13 and 14, more than half – 12 girls – were to Hispanics. Nearly 15 percent of all teen births in the state were to girls who were already mothers. The rate was similar in 2008: of the 2,817 teen births, 1,364 were to Hispanic teens. Hispanics make up just 13 percent of the state’s population.
LISTEN TO FIRST PERSON: Candida Flores helps teen mothers.
To read related story on programs available to help teens click here.
Hospitals: Same Surgery, Widely Different Rates
by Rob Gurwitt | Dec 25, 2011 11:00 pm | Comments (16)
Each time John Dempsey Hospital performs a cardiac valve surgery, the hospital receives a median payment of $82,589 from Medicare – about $23,000 more than the median paid to Danbury Hospital for the same surgical procedure.
A pacemaker implant at Dempsey, part of the University of Connecticut, costs Medicare about $20,000—$2,200 more than Yale-New Haven, $3,500 more than Bridgeport Hospital and $6,300 more than the Hospital of Central Connecticut.
Federal reimbursements for surgical procedures swing widely among Connecticut hospitals, a C-HIT analysis of available Medicare data shows, with Dempsey receiving a higher rate than other hospitals for most procedures. Yale-New Haven, Bridgeport and Windham hospitals also were consistently among the top five in Medicare reimbursements, according to the data.
Experts say the variation in Medicare payments is due to a variety of factors, including the type of hospital (teaching or non-teaching), regional wages and salaries, the income mix and sickness of patients and the number of tests and services provided.
To read related story on consumers’ access to health care costs click here.
School Arrests Bring New Scrutiny, Reforms
by Lisa Chedekel | Dec 13, 2011 10:30 pm | Comments (3)
As a fifth grader at a New Haven magnet school in 2009, Jacob was watching a lot of “Ed, Edd n Eddy” shows on TV—a slapstick cartoon that features adolescent equivalents of the Three Stooges.
Maybe too many shows, his mother now says.
That October, she received a call saying her 10-year-old son was in the principal’s office with a police officer who was preparing to arrest him for giving a younger student— a girl—a wedgie on the school bus. His parents were dumbfounded.
“It was just surreal. You’re going to arrest a little boy over this?” said his mother, who asked that her name not be used to protect her son. She said Jacob, who had special education needs that she believed were not being addressed by the school, had been punched and injured in prior incidents that had never resulted in arrests. “It still brings up such anger and even tears at this point,” she said.
A C-HIT review of data collected by the Connecticut judicial department suggests that Jacob’s arrest, which was later dropped, is not unusual, especially in inner-city or overcrowded schools.
From March through May of this year, more than 700 arrests were made in Connecticut schools, two-thirds of them for minor offenses such as breach of peace or disorderly conduct, according to data obtained from the Court Support Services Division (CSSD).
Hospitals To Face Penalties For High Readmissions
by Lisa Chedekel | Nov 26, 2011 11:00 pm | Comments (3)
Patients treated for pneumonia at four Connecticut hospitals have ended up readmitted to the hospital within 30 days at rates significantly higher than the national average—a lapse that the federal government considers costly and potentially harmful, and that could lead to Medicare penalties beginning in 2012.
Two of the hospitals – MidState Medical Center in Meriden and Yale-New Haven Hospital – exceeded the national readmission rate for two straight years, in 2009 and 2010, federal data shows. A third, St. Francis in Hartford, exceeded the rate in 2010. Although the most recent rates for all three were deemed within average range, they remained higher than the national rate.
The Hospital of St. Raphael in New Haven, which plans to merge with Yale-New Haven, has exceeded the readmission rate for three years in a row—a repeat deficiency that the hospital’s director of quality improvement says St. Raphael’s is aggressively trying to address.
Hospital readmissions have been under scrutiny as health reformers look for ways to cut spending and improve care. Nationally, about 20 percent of hospitalized Medicare patients are back within 30 days, at an estimated cost of $17 billion a year, according to the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission.
To view how patients rate hospitals and other hospital ratings click here.
Asthma Rate Climbs To 9.4%; Worst In Cities
by Jennifer Kaylin | Nov 21, 2011 10:30 am | Comments (5)
Residents in Connecticut’s five largest cities are nearly three times more likely to be hospitalized for asthma – and twice as likely to die from it—as residents in the rest of the state, according to new data from the state Department of Public Health.
The prevalence of state adults reporting asthma has increased from 7.8 percent in 2000 to 9.4 percent in 2009, the most-recent data shows, but it is residents in the five cities—Bridgeport, Hartford, New Haven, Stamford and Waterbury – who bear the brunt of it.
The five largest cities had asthma hospitalization and emergency department rates that were about three times higher than the rest of the state.
Home Care Inspections Lag, Fines Rarely Imposed
by Colleen Shaddox | Oct 24, 2011 9:00 pm | Comments (0)
Nurse Tish Allen hooks Judy Taber to a vacuum system to promote healing of Taber’s latest pressure ulcer. Allen asks how Taber’s pain rates today on a scale of one to 10. “Nine,” replies Tabor, who suffers from a rare spinal disease, ankylosing spondylitis, which has taken away her ability to walk, swallow or turn her head completely.
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about this treatment is that it’s happening in Taber’s Hamden apartment – not a hospital. Like many Connecticut residents, Taber depends on home care.
But as reliance on home care grows, inspections of agencies in Connecticut are backlogged, and the state rarely imposes financial penalties on agencies found with patient-care violations, a review by C-HIT has found.
To view home health agency ratings click here
Doc Solicited Patients’ Money For Private Firms
by Lisa Chedekel | Oct 3, 2011 12:00 pm | Comments (1)
On the website for his stem-cell research company, Dr. Wayne P. Franco of Middletown promises “new hope” to patients suffering from heart disease, stroke and other ailments.
New Heart, LLC, which is developing “revolutionary” adult stem cell treatments, offers investors the chance to join in the “economic goal of achieving financial profits from licensing our technology,” the website says. New Heart boasts at least 40 investors.
But the way that Franco has attracted some of those investors is the subject of complaints to two state agencies.
The state Department of Health [DPH] is investigating complaints from four patients who said that Franco solicited them to invest in his companies while he was treating them, or shortly before he began treating them. All four said they were discharged from Franco’s practice when they asked for information about how their money was being used.
Westover Vets Fight For Agent Orange Benefits
by Lisa Chedekel | Sep 12, 2011 4:38 am | Comments (1)
In the years since they flew together out of Westover Air Force Base in Massachusetts in the post-Vietnam War era, Wes Carter and Paul Bailey have stayed in close touch, swapping information about families, jobs, and their former crewmates in the 74th Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron.
This year, the conversation took a strange turn: Bailey, who lives in New Hampshire, was diagnosed with prostate cancer in February. Two months later, Carter, a former Massachusetts resident who now lives in Oregon, got the same diagnosis.
Curious about the coincidence, the two men began checking around with members of their Air Force Reserve squadron – particularly those who had flown the C-123 Provider, a plane that was used to spray Agent Orange during the Vietnam War and then was reassigned to domestic missions at Westover and two other U.S. bases.
Carter was stunned: the first five crewmen he called had prostate cancer or heart disease.
The sixth man he tried had died.
Port Security A Concern As Funds Shrink
by Kate Farrish | Sep 9, 2011 4:45 am | Comments (1)
Shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorists attacks, Bridgeport made its summer marine police unit a year-round effort to protect the port, where oil, coal, bananas and pineapples arrived on ships from Colombia, Costa Rica and Indonesia.
Police officer Ed Martocchio signed up for the harbor patrol, motivated by 9/11. Today, he remains on alert.
“I spend every waking hour and some sleeping hours worrying about them,” Martocchio said of terrorists, dragging his hands down his tanned face while patrolling the harbor by boat one hot August day. “What are they going to do next? Where are they going to do it?”
Martocchio, 43, boards tankers with the Coast Guard to check the passports of the international crews, giving him a front seat on the war on terror.
“I went from being an ordinary city cop to someone who can potentially have an international impact,’’ he said.