Tuesday, August 21, 2018

3rd Hospital Cited in a Telemetry Death


By Walter F. Roche Jr.

Another Pennsylvania hospital has been cited in a telemetry related failure that ended with a patient's death.
In a report recently made public, state health department surveyors found that two staff nurses at the New Lifecare Hospital of Mechanicsburg failed to respond when told the alarm had sounded on a patient on a cardiac monitor.
In fact, the report states, the patient was off the monitor for approximately 45 minutes before a technician found the patient "pale, no pulse and non-responsive."
After reviewing the records of the June 8 incident, state surveyors declared a "state of immediate jeopardy." The emergency declaration requires hospital officials to come up with an immediate corrective action plan. They did so nearly four hours later.
The patient, the report states, was resuscitated and transferred to another hospital but died less than an hour after transfer.
The report comes as the facility is in the final phases of a permanent shutdown. Announced last month the closure is expected to become final early next month putting over 120 employees out of work.
Officials of New Lifecare and its parent company did not respond to requests for comment.
Hospital records show the patient was checked at 1:30 p.m. and "no distress was noted." It was nearly an hour later at 2:28 p.m. when a technician found the patient unresponsive. The patient was revived and transferred to another hospital at 3:03 p.m.
The surveyors reported that the technician monitoring the cardiac monitor "told two nurses that the patient's monitor needed to be checked." Neither nurse went to check the patient.
The report cites the hospital for failure to follow the orders of the patient's doctor, who had ordered a cardiac monitor.
In addition the surveyors found that staffers administered drugs to the patient without a physician's orders. In fact in three other cases of patients who suffered cardiac incidents, medicines were administered without a doctor's orders.
In yet another finding the surveyors found that hospital staffers failed to follow proper procedures in the use of restraints.
The hospital filed a plan of correction which included a new requirement for nurses to respond to monitor alarms within two minutes. They also agreed to have on-call physicians available 24 hours a day-seven days a week and to re-educate staff on proper procedures for medications.
Earlier this year state surveyors cited the Nazareth Hospital in Philadelphia for failure to respond to a telemetry alarm.More recently Paoli Hospital was cited when a telemetry alarm was repeatedly silenced despite the lack of response from staffers assigned to check on the patient.
In both cases, the patient died.
Contact: wfrochejr999@gmail.com

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