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Doc and CRNAs Indicted on 28 Counts in Nevada Hep C Outbreak
After a 2-year criminal investigation into the Las Vegas-area hepatitis C outbreak, a grand jury has indicted a physician and 2 nurse anesthetists on 28 felony counts, including racketeering, patient neglect and insurance fraud. Dipak Desai, MD, and nurse anesthetists Ronald Ernest Lakeman and Keith H. Mathahs were charged in connection with the unsafe injection practices at the Endoscopy Center of Southern Nevada that infected 7 patients with the hepatitis C virus. Among the 28 charges, the indictment from the Clark County (Nev.) grand jury alleges that: • The 3 defendants falsified anesthesia records during routine procedures between June 2005 and May 2008 and submitted them to insurance companies to be reimbursed under false pretenses. • Dr. Desai pressured employees at the endoscopy center to reuse single-use vials of propofol on multiple patients, to reuse syringes and other instruments intended for single use, to limit the use of supplies needed for safe endoscopic procedures and to rush those procedures to enhance the center's bottom line. • Under Dr. Desai's leadership, employees overloaded the endo center's schedule and were not properly trained on how to clean endoscopes between cases. District Judge Elissa Cadish set bail for Dr. Desai at $1 million and bail for Mr. Lakeman and Mr. Mathahs at $500,000 each. After the outbreak came to light in 2008, Dr. Desai suffered a series of strokes, gave up his license to practice medicine and filed for bankruptcy. In addition to the criminal charges, he's also facing dozens of medical malpractice lawsuits from former endoscopy patients. After the outbreak came to light in 2008, Dr. Desai suffered a series of strokes, gave up his license to practice medicine and filed for bankruptcy. In addition to the criminal charges, he's also facing dozens of medical malpractice lawsuits from former endoscopy patients. www.outpatientsurgery.net/news/2010/06/8

Hospital Closing Leaves Many New Yorkers In A Lurch
The closing of St. Vincent's Hospital has left yet another wounded group in the lurch - hundreds of New Yorkers who are suing the hospital for medical malpractice. More than 260 people pursuing malpractice and negligence claims against the bankrupt hospital are in legal limbo. With St. Vincent's assets going to Bankruptcy Court, the victims may never see a penny in damages, sources told the Daily News. The cases range from babies who suffered brain damage during delivery to patients who developed painful bedsores while hospitalized, lawyers said. "This is a second nightmare for those families, who have already suffered at the hands of negligent physicians at St. Vincent's Hospital," said Jeffrey Korek, a lawyer with Gersowitz, Libo and Korek, which has six pending cases against the shuttered hospital. Hospital leaders voted to close St. Vincent's last month in the face of a crippling $1 billion debt. The hospital filed for bankruptcy a short time later, as payments to creditors loomed. St. Vincent's was primarily self-insured against medical malpractice claims with a special trust fund set up to protect the hospital, officials said. Hospital officials refused to say how much money is in the trust. Many believe it's underfunded by $150 million to $250 million - and its holdings would first be doled out to priority creditors rather than potential victims. "I think that $150 million is a woefully low estimate," said Richard Kanowitz, a lawyer with Cooley, Godward Kronish. "There are a lot of serious injuries and deaths that will go unremedied, and the people who are entitled to money and need money for care will not get it," he said. Many of the malpractice cases are in pretrial or the trials already have begun. Others have been settled or ruled on, but have not yet been paid - and may never be. Lawyers for St. Vincent's did not return phone calls for comment, but hospital spokesman Michael Fagan said officials are reviewing claims. Fagan said the hospital had some third-party insurance, but he could not say how much - if any - would cover medical malpractice claims. Families of victims, dead or alive, have no recourse except to wait and see whether the sale of St. Vincent's real estate holdings will produce enough cash to trickle down to them. The same is true for malpractice victims at St. Vincent's defunct sister hospitals, such as Mary Immaculate in Queens, which closed early last year. One such case involves the family of Shenika Babb, who won a $5.3 million jury verdict after a faulty defibrillator failed to stop her mother's fatal heart attack. The struggling family hasn't received a single dollar, said Babb, who was left to care for her seven siblings when her mom died. "It's just sad, very, very sad, because we need the money for my sister and for tuition. I'm just going to pray for financial aid," she said. Other victims represented by Korek include a man who was mistakenly told he had AIDS. "He thought he was going to die," Korek said. "These cases are all stayed. They can't go forward." Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2010/05/13/2010-05-13_st_vincents_hospital_closing_threatens_hundreds_of_medical_malpractice_lawsuits.html#ixzz0qNfELNQP

Poor Infection Control At Many Surgery Centers
updated 3:00 p.m. CT, Tues., June 8, 2010 CHICAGO - A new federal study finds many same-day surgery centers — where patients get such things as foot operations and pain injections — have serious problems with infection control. Failure to wash hands, wear gloves and clean blood glucose meters were among the reported breaches. Clinics reused devices meant for one person or dipped into single-dose medicine vials for multiple patients. The findings, appearing in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association, suggest lax infection practices may pervade the nation's more than 5,000 outpatient centers, experts said. "These are basic fundamentals of infection control, things like cleaning your hands, cleaning surfaces in patient care areas," said lead author Dr. Melissa Schaefer of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "It's all surprising and somewhat disappointing." The study was prompted by a hepatitis C outbreak in Las Vegas believed to be caused by unsafe injection practices at two now-closed clinics. It's the first report from a push to more vigorously inspect U.S. outpatient centers, a growing segment of the health care system that annually performs more than 6 million procedures and collects $3 billion from Medicare. Procedures performed at such centers include exams of the esophagus, colonoscopies and plastic surgery. In the study, state inspectors visited 68 centers in Maryland, North Carolina and Oklahoma. They used a new audit tool focusing on infection control. At each site, inspectors followed at least one patient through an entire stay. Inspections weren't announced ahead of time, but staff were notified once inspectors arrived. Nearly 70 percent had at least one lapse The new study found 67 percent of the centers had at least one lapse in infection control and 57 percent were cited for deficiencies. The study didn't look at whether any of the lapses actually led to infections in patients. "These people knew they were under observation, had the opportunity to be on their best behavior and yet these lapses were still identified, some of which potentially are very dangerous and have been warned against explicitly," said Dr. Philip Barie of Weill Cornell Medical College in New York. Barie was not involved in the study but wrote an accompanying editorial in the journal. A few centers in the study hadn't been inspected in 12 years. State agencies have the main responsibility for making sure centers comply with federal standards, but states often fall behind.

Medical Errors Costing U.S. Billions
TUESDAY, April 8 (The Washington Post- Health Day News) -- From 2004 through 2006, patient safety errors resulted in 238,337 potentially preventable deaths of U.S. Medicare patients and cost the Medicare program $8.8 billion, according to the fifth annual Patient Safety in American Hospitals Study. This analysis of 41 million Medicare patient records, released April 8 by HealthGrades, a health care ratings organization, found that patients treated at top-performing hospitals were, on average, 43 percent less likely to experience one or more medical errors than patients at the poorest-performing hospitals. The overall medical error rate was about 3 percent for all Medicare patients, which works out to about 1.1 million patient safety incidents during the three years included in the analysis. For more on this article see: washingtonpost.com and search “Medical Errors Costing U.S. Billions.”

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