Stanford-affiliated medical heart banned from treating a few of state’s sickest kids

Stanford-affiliated John Muir Medical Heart in Walnut Creek has been banned from treating a few of California’s most critically unwell kids, in keeping with current investigations by The San Francisco Chronicle.

California regulators with the Division of Well being Care Providers flagged 47 violations on the heart and barred the middle’s pediatric intensive care unit (PICU), which is partnered with Stanford Medication Kids’s Well being, from treating sufferers lined by California Kids’s Providers (CCS). CCS is a public well being program that has elevated the PICU’s income because it was first licensed to deal with sufferers related to CCS in 2017.

State regulators investigated the PICU following a sequence of investigations by The Chronicle into 4 pediatric sufferers’ deaths, which The Chronicle claims had been preventable. Based on Chronicle reporting, one household concerned in a lawsuit in opposition to John Muir claimed that the middle took over the surgical procedure for his or her daughter, Ailee Jong, “to attempt to enhance its popularity, make cash and vault the medical heart into the massive league of Bay Space kids’s hospitals.” 

John Muir’s PICU opened in 2015 beneath the partnership of Stanford Medication Kids’s Well being. Based on The Chronicle, the Jong household’s lawsuit alleges that John Muir misrepresented its pediatric program as being equal to Stanford’s.

The Every day has reached out to John Muir Well being Heart for remark.

Based on The Chronicle, regulators discovered that John Muir’s PICU is considered one of solely 4 state-approved PICUs which have “by no means reached the 350-patient threshold,” with annual numbers fluctuating between about 240 and 320. With solely 8 beds in its PICU, it’s troublesome to attract conclusions concerning the total high quality of affected person care within the hospital. 

One other lawsuit, filed by former physician Dr. Alicia Kalamas, alleges that the hospital prioritized revenue over the security of its sufferers and ignored the crimson flags she raised over surgical risks. Based on The Chronicle, in her lawsuit, Kalamas stated that she was handled by hospital executives as a troublemaker after her analysis discovered that there was a scarcity of hospital procedures to teach and supply remedy for constipation arising from the prescription of painkillers post-surgeries. 

Questions over the standard of care at John Muir had been additionally raised earlier this yr after a report by the Facilities for Medicare & Medicaid Providers, a federal company, documented critical issues with the PICU. The Chronicle reported that federal well being regulators threatened to chop federal Medicare funding for the hospital over “the potential for substandard care to go undetected and proceed.”

This isn’t the primary time {that a} Stanford-affiliated hospital has been publicly accused of failing to forestall pediatric affected person demise. A 2015 Vox investigation into how central line infections are addressed detailed the story of Nora Boström, whose household alleged that medical suppliers at Lucile Packard Kids’s Hospital may have prevented Boström’s demise. 

John Muir Well being is a non-profit group that operates hospitals in each Walnut Creek and Harmony. Its hospital in Walnut Creek is a “group hospital,” that means it doesn’t have a excessive affected person quantity or intensive care capabilities like tutorial facilities or kids’s hospitals. Based on The Chronicle, federal regulators additionally flagged that hospital officers didn’t specify procedures for transferring sufferers that wanted expanded care. 

Stanford Medication Kids’s Well being, broadly thought of a high medical establishment, has partnered with John Muir Well being for over a decade, with John Muir receiving medical specialists and different sources. The establishments’ partnership was not too long ago prolonged to 2032 to “proceed to fulfill the wants of sufferers within the East Bay.” 

The Every day has reached out to the College for remark.