After multiple federal and state inspectors found patient care at a for-profit hospital in northwest Louisiana to be in jeopardy, lawmakers hope to carry the owner of Dallas-based Glenwood Regional Medical Center accountable during a hearing before the Health and Human Services Committee Community House of Representatives, based on State Representative Michael Echols.
“It’s a terrible situation,” said Echols, R-Monroe. “The Stewards Group has committed criminal offences, if not very egregious ones, in the provision of health care. They are hurting people and we need to have the right hearing.”
Rep. Michael Echols, R-Monroe
Echols’ office receives calls weekly from patients and employees of West Monroe Hospital, which serves not only western Ouachita Parish but additionally quite a few rural parishes within the region.
The requested hearing, tentatively scheduled for April 4, comes after lawmakers raised concerns about substandard care on the Louisiana Department of Health. On Wednesday, LDH sent a letter to lawmakers saying the hospital had until May 12 to repair the issues or risk losing federal funding.
If Glenwood doesn’t fix its supply and staffing problems, the lack of funding from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will almost actually cause the hospital to shut.
The steward didn’t reply to quite a few emailed questions on problems identified by inspectors or service availability.
Weekly inspections, closing of units
The troubled hospital, cited twice since December for putting patients in “imminent danger” of harm, is now subject to weekly inspection visits by state inspectors, based on the letter.
But already Glenwood is shrinking. The 278-bed hospital is restricted to 91 patients. The rehabilitation ward was closed on Wednesday.
The hospital is one in all 33 facilities within the national for-profit Steward Health network, a system backed by private capital. According to quite a few news reports, the corporate has faced criticism for failing to pay bills, which allegedly harmed patients in Massachusetts hospitals.
In one in all the Massachusetts Steward hospitals the patient allegedly died the day after giving birth when, halfway through the operation, doctors realized that the measures to stop the bleeding had been taken over, he claims articles in The Boston Globe.. The Globe reports that at one other hospital in Massachusetts, a patient allegedly collapsed and died after standing in line in a packed emergency room.
Glenwood’s problems
Steward owns one hospital in Louisiana. Special beds at Glenwood were taken over to forestall bedsores, forcing patients to maneuver mid-stay, based on December federal inspection reports obtained by The Times-Picayune. The hospital ran out of biopsy needles, catheters and central lines. Machines for scanning bones, performing mammograms and performing MRIs broke down and weren’t repaired. Patients needed to be transferred for advanced care, even when the medical team determined that the transfer was unsafe.
Ten doctors expressed “deep concern” in regards to the situation on the hospital in April last yr, based on a letter sent to the hospital’s governing body by the medical executive committee. It was signed by several chiefs of staff and the chief medical officer.
They didn’t have the resources for routine cardiac procedures. Suction containers that clean the patient’s respiratory tract have run out. The blood supply company informed the hospital that its credit was running out. Food and milk deliveries were sometimes interrupted on account of unpaid bills.
According to 1 doctor cited in federal inspection reports in December, conditions resembled “Third World medicine.” The situation was addressed, based on reports, but in February, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services again deemed the hospital an imminent threat, based on a letter to lawmakers.
“Terrorists in health care”
Echols views Steward’s executives as “health care terrorists” and would really like to see them criminally punished for their negligence. West Monroe residents want them removed, he said.
“They want another operator,” Echols said. “This organization has been professionally negligent.”
He said staff do not need the resources for basic procedures and patients are affected by dangerous infections. “I would even predict that due to negligence, patients would not only be injured but also killed.”
