Fourteen California hospitals, including Kaiser Foundation Hospital, Scripps Memorial Hospital, Sutter Solano Medical Center, and University of California San Francisco Medical Center, face thousands of dollars in penalties for not complying with requirements that prevent patient safety risks, including a sponge left inside a patient after surgery and a medication overdose.
The California Department of Public Health (CDPH) announced last week Scripps Memorial Hospital La Jolla did not follow surgical policies and procedures when it left a foreign object--a 2.5-centimeter-long pin inside a woman's cervical spine--in a patient in October 2010, leading to a $100,000 penalty for the hospital, reports KTLA.
"Scripps deeply regrets this event. As a result, we have made improvements, including changes to our count and X-ray processes, to prevent events such as this from occurring in the future," the organization said in a statement. "At Scripps, we treat hundreds of thousands of patients each year with excellent outcomes. On the rare occasion where an error occurs, we work to understand the underlying cause and improve the quality of our care."
Mission Hospital Regional Medical Center also received a $100,000 fine for a similar incident. Torrance Memorial Medical Center removed a retained foreign object in a patient and must pay $75,000.
A surgeon at University of California San Francisco Medical Center erroneously made an incorrect incision on a patient's left eye instead of the right eye, leading to a $75,000 fine, reports SF Appeal Online Newspaper.
Sutter Solano Medical Center left a sponge inside a woman who underwent a Cesarean section at the hospital and faces $50,000 in fines. Fresno Surgical Hospital and Ventura County Medical Center also face $50,000 fines for foreign objects left during surgery.
San Francisco General Hospital, too, faces a $50,000 fine after a female patient was admitted for a complete mastectomy but instead received a partial mastectomy, reports SF Appeal. Los Angeles County + University of Southern California faces a $25,000 fine for a foreign object left during surgery, and Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital must pay $50,000 for failing to follow its surgical policies and procedures.
Four of the 14 hospitals failed to provide safe and effective medication administration, CDPH found.
Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital in Los Angeles and Kaiser Foundation Hospital in San Francisco each face a $50,000 fine for their first administrative penalty. Lucile Salter Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford must pay $50,000 for administering a newborn patient with higher-than-intended doses of medication, and St. Jude Medical Center in Orange County must pay $75,000 for its third administrative penalty.
The fines vary by the number of violations, according to the CDPH press release. In addition to the financial penalties, the hospitals must submit a corrective action plan to prevent future incidents.
For more information:
- read the CDPH news release
- read the Los Angeles Times news brief
- read the SF Appeal article
- read the KTLA article
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