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Hospital proposal prompts outcry { July 26 2003 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48093-2003Jul25.htmlhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48093-2003Jul25.html
Hospital Proposal Prompts Outcry
Closing Would Leave SE Without an ER
By Avram Goldstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, July 26, 2003; Page B02
D.C. Council members and hospital industry officials reacted forcefully yesterday to a report that city hospital inspectors have recommended that Greater Southeast Community Hospital be closed because of persistent quality problems.
The recommendation was made in March and renewed in a July 18 memo to Health Department Director James A. Buford, but he has not acted on it.
The memo cited six deaths that inspectors considered preventable and the hospital's failure to reach 17 required quality goals.
Buford was on vacation and unavailable for comment yesterday. City Administrator John A. Koskinen yesterday said Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D) wants to preserve a hospital in Ward 8 that can provide good quality care.
The challenge of improving the facility is complicated by Greater Southeast's being under bankruptcy court protection.
"If it's not going to be able to provide quality care, it won't be operating," Koskinen said. "The risk at this point is that people will say they're going to go somewhere else, and the hospital will be in more financial difficulty than it is now."
The for-profit hospital is a key link in the city's private hospital system, officials said.
D.C. Council member Kevin P. Chavous (D-Ward 7), who opposed shutting down inpatient care at D.C. General Hospital two years ago and establishing the privatized system, said the troubles at Greater Southeast show why Williams should plan to build a new hospital at the campus of the shuttered hospital.
"I think the mayor needs to publicly put together a long-term plan for a new public hospital on the D.C. General grounds," he said.
"They've been dragging their feet on that. This is something the council wants to see happen. Anything short of that is going to be insufficient."
The chairman of the D.C. Hospital Association urged action.
"The loss of Greater Southeast Hospital would leave one-quarter of the city without an acute care hospital for heart attacks and strokes, and that is unacceptable," said Daniel McLean, who is also chief executive of George Washington University Hospital.
"The loss of the hospital would be outrageous. Allowing them to continue at less than an acceptable quality level is equally outrageous. . . . Task forces and study groups are no longer an acceptable response. Immediate intervention and action is what's required now."
The District's chief medical officer, Michael S.A. Richardson, met yesterday with Greater Southeast's new administrator, Joan G. Phillips, hospital lawyer John Ray and Paul Tuft, president of the Arizona-based parent company, Doctors Community Healthcare Corp.
"I think it was a very helpful, constructive, good meeting," Tuft said later in telephone interview from Chicago. "Dr. Richardson and Joan will work together very hard to fix up the deficiencies and focus the hospital on its mission of serving patients."
Richardson declined to comment.
The six deaths cited by inspectors in the July 18 memo included those of two infants, two adults who received erroneous blood transfusions and a man found dead on a gurney in the emergency room July 3 seven hours after arriving with complaints of abdominal pain.
The memo said the hospital has repeatedly submitted incomplete or unresponsive plans of correction and has failed to meet schedule goals for compliance.
It also said city monitors have given Greater Southeast more than a year to comply with standards.
Tuft and Phillips said a quality improvement program has been in development for five months with the help of consultants in hopes of satisfying concerns of the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations.
However, Koskinen said the hospital's quality improvement director left recently after a few weeks on the job. Koskinen said he didn't know the reason.
The commission is expected to revoke Greater Southeast's national accreditation Aug. 18, a move that would bar the hospital from collecting fees from most health plans.
Greater Southeast is the largest private employer in Ward 8, which is represented on the D.C. Council by Sandy Allen (D). She chairs the committee that oversees health care, and yesterday she said in a phone interview from San Francisco that she knows the chief hospital regulator, Theodore J. Gordon, to be conscientious.
"Mr. Gordon has done an excellent job," she said. "Ted is a stickler for District and federal regulations. He knows what they are, and people are important to him."
She said that since Buford took over the Health Department last year, he has been overwhelmed by the job of running a $1.4 billion agency.
© 2003 The Washington Post Company
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