Christine McCarthy was living a nightmare.
Her infant daughter, Layla had been left paralyzed after a heart surgery at St. Mary’s Medical Center in West Palm Beach, Florida — and doctors couldn’t explain why.
That’s when a stranger on an elevator quietly offered advice that may have saved young Layla’s advice.
“You need to get her out of here.”
Pediatric heart patients were dying in record numbers at St. Mary’s — a dark secret that hospital doctors and executives kept from patients and the public.
A major news outlet has blown the lid off the cover-up. The federal government has even launched an investigation.
But St. Mary’s isn’t alone. More than half of pediatric hospitals refuse to share how many of their youngest heart patients survive surgery. And it’s never been more important to take three simple steps that could save the life of a child you love.
Sacrificial lambs
If you’re the parent or grandparent of a young child needing heart surgery, of course you’ll want to find the very best hospital and doctor you can.
But researching heart surgery outcomes at these pediatric hospitals is next to impossible. Most don’t reveal the success rate for their surgeries, and their transparency is about as clear as mud.
A recent investigation by CNN found that 60 out of 109 pediatric heart centers provide no numbers on how many of their tiny patients actually make it out of the hospital alive. And even when asked to provide the data, many flat-out refuse.
“I feel like patients don’t know what every physician knows: that there’s a tremendous variation in the quality of medical care out there,” said Dr. Martin Makary, a professor of surgery at Johns Hopkins.
Dr. Makary also pointed out that some pediatric surgeons have “impeccable records,” while others have histories of surgical complications that “are outrageous.”
And you can’t get more outrageous than the record of botched surgeries at St. Mary’s, the Florida hospital that Christine McCarthy was warned to get her baby out of. Its mortality rate for infants having heart surgery was three times the national average — a fact that parents were never made aware of.
CNN found that out on its own, using information it got from the state of Florida through a Freedom of Information Act request — and then confirming the death toll with parents.
But when CNN tried to speak with St. Mary’s pediatric heart surgeon, Dr. Michael Black and other hospital executives, they outright refused. St. Mary’s astronomical death rate — and continued veil of silence — has even led the Federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to open an official investigation into the hospital.
Maybe the feds can finally get answers for grieving and deceived parents like Nneka Campbell. Dr. Black allegedly told Nneka that her 8-month-old daughter, Amelia, was his first patient to die at the hospital after heart surgery.
But we know now that she was the fourth. And not the last.
But when it comes to keeping parents in the dark — and outright lying to them — about heart surgery results, there are plenty of hospitals like St. Mary’s out there. For example, when four babies suffered serious complications after heart surgery at Kentucky Children’s Hospital two years ago (two of them dying within an eight-week period), outraged parents tried to uncover how many other infants had died in its heart program.
KCH denied an information request from the state’s attorney general and even went to court to keep the death rates for the program, run by Dr. Mark Plunkett, a secret.
Of course, Plunkett’s pediatric surgery program was eventually shut down and he was handed a million-dollar severance from KCH — while countless parents were left picking up the pieces.
If your child or grandchild may be undergoing heart surgery, there are three things you should do before picking a hospital.
- Ask the hospital directly about its mortality rates. Some hospitals do share the data — and the ones who don’t may be hiding something.
- Find out the number of pediatric heart surgeries the hospital performs a year. Hospitals may be more willing to disclose this figure. Pediatric hospitals that conduct fewer than 100 heart surgeries a year (St. Mary’s only performed 18 surgeries in 2014, down from 27 in 2012) are considered “low volume,” which increases the risk for complications and deaths. Dr. Roger Mee, former chief of pediatric heart surgery at the Cleveland Clinic, says it’s nearly impossible to build a quality team around so few cases.
- Click here to see a guide to pediatric heart hospitals put together by CNN. It could very well be one of the most important things you can do to protect the health and safety of a child.
Sources:
“Secret deaths: CNN finds high surgical death rate for children at Florida hospital” Elizabeth Cohen and John Bonifield, June 3, 2015, CNN, cnn.com
