A few months ago, I described the hospital where I used to practice and what was happening there recently.
Now, we have some new developments.
A couple more years went by and I learned that the hospital had laid off the low wage “environmental services” workers who cleaned the operating rooms between cases. Nurses, who made three or four times the hourly wage of the cleaning staff were now expected to clean rooms between cases in addition to their other duties.
That practice continued and now has caused severe problems. Last week, I learned that the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Hospitals had visited the hospital and had withdrawn the accreditation from Surgery, Labor and Delivery and Cardiology services. These are the heart of the acute care hospital. The reason ? Let’s read the paper.
From todays Orange County Register.
All elective surgeries at Mission Hospital, the third-largest hospital in Orange County, are on hold after four patients who underwent orthopedic operations developed infections.
The hospital opted to close its 14 operating rooms in Mission Viejo and Laguna Beach last week after a major accrediting agency, The Joint Commission, intervened and found, among other problems, high temperatures and humidity in some of the rooms, according to Chief Medical Officer Dr. Linda Sieglen.
If those infections were in patients undergoing total joint replacements, they are disasters for those patients. The cost of laying off those room cleaners has finally come home.
The scandal, and that is what it should be, is deeper than that story suggests. Surgeries are being shifted to other hospitals and doctors are going to have to make changes in their practices. Relationships may change permanently.
It is frustrating and infuriating to see the great hospital we built up in the 1970s, reduced to a news story about poor care as the result of ignorant and corrupt administrators.
Tags: health care, politics
To save a penny they’ll lose a dollar. And what about all those patients who may suffer severe consequences to their health & well being? It’s interesting to hear the history of this particular hospital and your part in it building it and especially to hear your opinion on current vs past practices. Thank you.