An Orange County, CA-based hospital is now under state investigation after doing knee-repair surgery on a patient's healthy knee, marking the third "wrong-site" procedure to take place there since January 2006. Surgeons at St. Joseph's Hospital not only operated on the wrong knee, they'd previously made an incision on the wrong side of a patient's head and inserted an ear tube in the wrong ear. Now, the hospital is under investigation by the California Department of Public Health. According to hospital authorities, it has adopted Joint Commission protocols for avoiding wrong-site surgeries, but hasn't disclosed whether a failure to follow them helped engender the mistakes that were made.
To learn more about the hospital's error problem:
- read this Los Angeles Times piece