Horrific medical mistakes kill, maim and sicken New Yorkers in alarming numbers, The Post has learned.
Blunders – such as cutting out the wrong organ, giving a fatal medication overdose, leaving surgical tools in the body, and failing to keep patients safe from rape or suicide – are so widespread the state Health Department says Medicaid will begin refusing to pay hospitals for botched care and treatment to fix the damage.
The rule on so-called never events – outrageous errors “that should never happen” – takes effect Oct. 1, said Health Commissioner Dr. Richard Daines.
The get-tough policy, aimed at improving patient safety, follows a move by the feds to deny Medicare payments for certain medical mistakes. Cigna, Empire and other insurers also say they will stop paying for “preventable errors.”
The Post reported the heartbreaking case of a young woman who died last May, the day after a double mastectomy at Mercy Medical Center in Rockville Center, L.I. She didn’t have cancer – the lab had switched her biopsy results with someone else’s.
That happened a year after another woman, Darrie Eason, 35, of Long Beach, L.I, went public to warn of such lab mix-ups – which cost her both breasts despite being cancer-free.
In other cases at New York hospitals in the last three years, records show:
* A woman with an ectopic pregnancy lost both fallopian tubes at John T. Mather Memorial Hospital in Port Jefferson, LI, after the surgeon removed the left one, found no fetus, and called her back for another operation. She could not become pregnant again without in-vitro fertilization.
* A man lost both kidneys at Phelps Memorial Hospital in Westchester County after a surgeon – relying on an erroneous radiology report rather than a CT scan – cut out the left, healthy kidney instead of the cancerous right one. With both organs removed, he had to go on dialysis while awaiting a transplant.
* At Forest Hills Hospital in Queens, a surgeon mistakenly scheduled a man for a right-side hernia repair. A nurse alerted the operating-room staff that medical records called for left-side surgery, but they never told the surgeon.
* At Staten Island University Hospital, a man brought in from a car accident received a fatal overdose of fentanyl, a painkiller 80 times stronger than morphine. A resident stopped the IV drip, but nurses started it again at five times the dosage. No one checked the patient’s worsening vital signs.
* At St. Vincent’s Hospital in lower Manhattan, the NYPD brought in a woman threatening to jump from her 17th-story terrace two blocks away. The hospital had treated her 10 hours earlier for depression and alcohol abuse. Nurses put a “security hold” on the woman, calling for “close observation.” But ER staff left her belongings under her stretcher, against the rules. She got dressed, walked out and went home, where she leapt to her death.
“She was a sweet woman – everybody in the building was terribly upset,” a neighbor said. “There was a lot of anger that St. Vincent’s let her get out.”
Hospitals reported 251 cases of “foreign objects” – metal tools, wires, tubes, needles, sponges and lap pads – sewed up inside patients after surgery in 2006 and 2007. Left behind, the items can cause severe infections and blockages. Another surgery is needed to remove them,
Felicia Vaughn, of Jamaica, Queens, suffered stomach pain for months after surgery for rectal cancer at Long Island College Hospital in Queens. Doctors finally found a festering abscess in her abdomen caused by a green surgical towel left behind. After four more surgeries to treat the wound, she died.
Additional reporting by Kathianne Boniello