If you are willing to put children’s lives at risk over money you should probably check yourself into a hospital.
Unfortunately, Florida Republicans have figured out a way around that—just make some deals with the hospital and they’ll say you’re fine. Back in June, CNN found that Florida’s privately run St. Mary’s hospital had a terrible mortality record when it came to performing heart surgery on newborns. Newborns.
The hospital keeps its death rate secret. Calculating that rate required CNN to file a Freedom of Information request with the state of Florida's Agency for Health Care Administration.
According to the documents CNN obtained from the state, from 2011 to 2013, St. Mary's Medical Center performed 48 open heart surgeries on children and babies. Independently, CNN determined that six infants died, and confirmed the deaths with parents of all six children. From those numbers, CNN was able to calculate the death rate for open heart surgeries as 12.5%, more than three times the national average of 3.3% cited by the Society for Thoracic Surgeons.
In the Spring of 2014, St. Mary’s Medical Center and Palm Beach Children’s Hospital was reviewed where it was found to not meet the standards considered acceptable when it came to complex hear surgeries.
The above analysis of the STS Congenital Heart Surgery Database concludes that “There was an inverse association between pediatric cardiac surgical volume and mortality that became increasingly important as case complexity increased. Although volume was not associated with mortality for low-complexity cases, lower-volume programs underperformed larger programs as case complexity increased.”
Tenet Healthcare owns St. Mary’s. Tenet Healthcare spent about $200,000 on Florida Republicans. Two months after CNN revealed that St. Mary’s had failed their review, what happened? It wasn’t a legally binding review and Tenet and St. Mary’s didn’t heed the advice. But those standards could very be acted on at some point, right?
Less than two months later, the state decided to get rid of those standards.
That decision came after the giant for-profit hospital chain made contributions to Republican Gov. Rick Scott and his party that dwarfed those the company made to candidates or parties in other states.
"The whole situation is outrageous. It's just outrageous," said Louis St. Petery, a pediatric cardiologist in Tallahassee and former executive vice president of the Florida chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
[my emphasis]
But surely there’s an answer to this? Yes, CNN’s numbers are all wrong, says Rick-Scott-drivel-spewing, Tiffany Cowie. She explained that “state data” showed that St. Mary’s mortality rate was nowhere near as high as it had been reported. That explains it.
But Cowie didn't mention a crucial detail: The state data she referred to didn't take into account half of the babies' deaths.
Those babies had surgery at St. Mary's, but when their health spiraled downward, they were transferred to other hospitals. Those hospitals could not save them.
The original CNN article is brutal as it points out that many parents who torture themselves on whether they could have or should have known better than let their small child be operated on at St Mary’s.
They wouldn't have found anything. St. Mary's website heralded the arrival of "nationally renowned pediatric heart surgeon Dr. Michael Black" with glowing claims such as "smaller incisions -- improved self-esteem."
But there's no actual data. Unlike most other pediatric heart programs in Florida, St. Mary's does not publicly report its mortality rate.
What does Tenet have to say about all of the money they gave people like Rick Scott and the strange coincidence of standards being dropped?
"At no time have we discussed the pediatric cardiac standards with the governor or his office, or with any elected official or anyone on their staff," Tenet's Shelly Weiss Friedberg wrote in an email to CNN. "Our opinion was not sought on the standards nor have we expressed a position on the possible repeal of the standards or the role of the Cardiac Technical Advisory Panel."
That’s interesting.
David Nykanen, a pediatric cardiologist and member of the state's Cardiac Technical Advisory Panel, points out that Scott has been in office since 2011, and his administration never objected to the standards until a Tenet hospital was found publicly not to meet them
This is privatization praying on scared and trusting parents at a time when there is already dwindling hope.