UPMC Cited for Withholding Records

By Walter F. Roche Jr.

A UPMC facility has been cited for refusing to provide to state surveyors the minutes of meetings of an internal committee established to set and review professional improvement efforts.
Officials of UPMC Somerset told the state Health Department surveyors during a recent visit that they could not review minutes of the committee meetings because they were "peer review protected."
"On November 1, 2019 at approximately 1:00 p.m., multiple requests were made to EMP10 and EMP11, to review the Professional Improvement Committee meeting minutes, in order to evaluate the function and process of the committee. The request was denied," the report states.
In a plan of correction hospital officials said that in the future surveyors will be allowed to review the committee minutes but will not be allowed to take copies from the facility.
The citation marks the second time in recent months that state health surveyors have been rebuffed when they asked for such records. The Guthrie Towanda Memorial Hospital was cited for the same deficiency following a June visit to the facility.
The 99-bed UPMC hospital also was cited for failure to obtain properly executed consent forms from patients undergoing surgical procedures.
In one case an additional surgical procedure was performed that had not been included in the consent form.
In another case a patient undergoing an appendectomy had been anesthetized, but the surgeon canceled the procedure because it had not been approved by the patient's insurance carrier.
UPMC officials did not respond to requests for comment.
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