I-Team Blotter
Kaiser Report: CT Medicare Costs Sixth Highest In Nation
Little Progress Made On Health Disparities, New Report Shows
Settlement: Depakote Maker Injects $6 Million Into State Coffers
Nursing Homes Fined For Patient Death, Failure To Administer Drugs
Two Connecticut Doctors Lose Licenses in New York State
Over 500 Docs And Nurses Providing Care In Medical Homes
Medical Board Reprimands Doctor, Physician Assistant
Smaller Hospitals Struggle With Deficits
Nursing Homes Fined For Choking Death, Weight Loss
Breast Cancer Gene Patent Case Heads Back To Appeals Court
Medical Board Revokes Doctor’s License
Theresa Sullivan Barger reports
Three CT Nursing Homes Make 2012 ‘Honor Roll’
Yale, St. Raphael’s Detail Plans For Merger
Three Nursing Homes Face Fines For Patient Injuries
Medical Board Fines, Restricts Doc’s Surgical License
Eighteen Hospital Executives Earn Over $1 Million
by Barbara Nagy | May 8, 2012 8:00 pm | Comments (2)
The health care system may be ailing, but newly compiled data show that compensation for top executives at Connecticut hospitals remains healthy.
Eighteen executives at the state’s 30 hospitals made more than $1 million in 2009-10, according to information the hospitals reported to the Internal Revenue Service. More than a third of these 18 – seven – were stepping down from their posts, and retirement benefits helped drive compensation across the board.
Hartford Hospital’s outgoing chief executive officer, John J. Meehan, was the highest paid in Connecticut and one of the highest paid nationally. His compensation totaled $6.98 million – all but $1.1 million of it nontaxable and retirement benefits, according to the hospital.
State Lags In Key Home Health Care Measures
by Lisa Chedekel | Apr 2, 2012 10:00 pm | Comments (4)
As the Malloy administration seeks to expand home health care options and reduce reliance on nursing homes, a new national report shows Connecticut ranking in the bottom-quarter of states on several key indicators of home health quality, including the percentage of home care patients who show improvement in mobility and who avoid hospitalizations.
Data compiled in the report by the Commonwealth Fund shows that the state’s three hospital referral regions—Hartford, New Haven and Bridgeport—ranked 255th out of 306 regions in 2010-11 in the percentage of home health care patients whose ability to walk or move around improved. The state also was in the lowest quartile nationally for the percentage of home health patients whose wounds healed or improved after an operation.
And Connecticut ranked in the bottom 25 of the 306 regions on the rate of keeping home health patients out of hospitals. The statewide rate of home care patients with a hospital admission was 33.5 percent—meaning one in three Connecticut home health clients landed in the hospital in 2010-11. The national median was significantly lower: 26.6 percent.
To view home health agencies ratings click here.
West Haven Company On Toxic Waste ‘Watch List’
by Barbara Moran | Mar 12, 2012 8:00 pm | Comments (1)
E.O. Manufacturing, a West Haven company specializing in industrial machinery, has been violating toxic waste laws for at least a decade, despite fines and legal action—a record that has earned it a spot on a national hazardous waste ‘watch list.’
The state claims that the Horton Place facility, which is adjacent to a middle school, was handling and managing hazardous wastes improperly. Although the state Department of Energy & Environmental Protection (DEEP) and the Attorney General’s office initiated action against E.O. more than three years ago, the company continues to dodge penalties and remediation orders.
Disciplined Docs Reap Drug Company Benefits
by Lisa Chedekel | Mar 5, 2012 10:00 pm | Comments (0)
In 2010, as state health officials were investigating allegations that Dr. Gerson Sternstein of Berlin was overmedicating patients, three pharmaceutical companies were showering thousands of dollars on the psychiatrist for meals and speaking engagements. Some of the payments continued even after his license was suspended in August 2010.
Similarly, Dr. Murray Wellner of West Hartford was the beneficiary of speaking fees and meals from four drug companies last year, even as federal prosecutors were investigating allegations that he wrote out 11 illegal prescriptions for controlled substances—charges he settled in April by paying a $42,500 fine.
Sternstein and Wellner are among the most striking examples of doctors in Connecticut who have reaped benefits from pharmaceutical companies while also being disciplined for violating medical conduct rules, according to records of the state Department of Public Health and public disclosures by drug companies from 2009 to 2011. That dual status—drug company beneficiary and over-prescriber—is not uncommon, experts say.
C-HIT Story Sparks US Senators’ Request For Probe
by Lisa Chedekel | Feb 20, 2012 9:00 pm | Comments (1)
Three U.S. senators are asking the inspector general of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to investigate physician oversight by state medical boards, after several recent media reports, including a C-HIT story on doctor discipline, raised questions about the adequacy of the boards’ supervision.
Is Myriad’s Patent On Breast Cancer Genes Valid?
by Barbara Puffer | Feb 16, 2012 9:45 pm | Comments (2)
As Myriad Genetic Laboratories nears its one millionth predictive genetic test for hereditary breast and ovarian cancer, the cost of the test has more than doubled, and the company’s 15-year patent monopoly is being challenged by critics who contend it is stymieing other potentially life-saving screening.
In addition, more than 140 researchers, doctors and clinicians affiliated with the Yale Cancer Center and from institutions all over the country, have written an open letter to Myriad raising concerns that the so-called BRAC Analysis test does not detect “a significant proportion of BRCA1 and BRCA 2 mutations” and therefore is not truly “comprehensive.”
Hospital Errors Persist, State Probes Rare
by Lisa Chedekel | Jan 29, 2012 10:00 pm | Comments (12)
Incidents of pressure ulcers, wrong-site surgeries and other surgical errors reported by Connecticut hospitals have increased in the last five years, despite myriad efforts to curb them, a new state report shows.
At the same time, state health department investigations of many hospital adverse events, such as patient injuries from falls, perforations resulting in disability, and death or serious injury due to surgery, have been rare, data in the report shows. For example, of 196 cases reported since 2007 in which patients were injured by a perforation during a colonoscopy or other procedure, the Department of Public Health (DPH) investigated just 20, or one in 10 cases.
The new Adverse Event Report, prepared by the DPH, marks the first time that acute-care hospitals and other medical facilities have been publicly identified by name, as they report errors that caused harm to patients.
The five hospitals with the highest rate of adverse events in 2010, calculated per 100,000 inpatient days, were: New Milford Hospital (21.4), the Hospital of St. Raphael in New Haven (19.2), Sharon Hospital (17.2), Johnson Memorial in Stafford Springs (17), and William W. Backus in Norwich (16.2). Other hospitals, including the Hospital of Central Connecticut and Saint Vincent’s Medical Center, had above-average rates of errors over the seven-year period from 2004-2010.
Teen Births: Nearly One-Half To Hispanics
by Magaly Olivero | Jan 24, 2012 9:00 pm | Comments (2)
Yanisha Claudio, 15, of Hartford, tenderly swaddled three-week-old Jordan, hoping he wouldn’t wake up. “He was crying until four o’clock in the morning,” said the weary Bulkeley High School freshman.
It’s been a tough year for Claudio, whose boyfriend broke up with her after a trip to the emergency room confirmed she was more than five months pregnant. At home for now, Claudio juggles the demands of being a mother and a student with help from a daily tutor, a case worker who visits weekly, and the baby’s grandmother, a former teen mother herself.
“I never thought this would happen to me,” said Claudio. “I don’t know anything about being a mother.”
While teen pregnancy rates have declined nationwide and in Connecticut, statistics and interviews show an intergenerational cycle of children-bearing-children puts Hispanic teens in Connecticut at risk of giving birth once, or even twice, before their twenties.
Hispanic teen birth rates in Connecticut are 8.5 times higher than whites and almost double that of African Americans for girls ages 15 to 19. Of the 2,626 teen births in 2009, almost half – 1,277 - were to Hispanics, according to data from the state Department of Public Health.
Of the 22 births to teen moms ages 13 and 14, more than half – 12 girls – were to Hispanics. Nearly 15 percent of all teen births in the state were to girls who were already mothers. The rate was similar in 2008: of the 2,817 teen births, 1,364 were to Hispanic teens. Hispanics make up just 13 percent of the state’s population.
LISTEN TO FIRST PERSON: Candida Flores helps teen mothers.
To read related story on programs available to help teens click here.
Hospitals: Same Surgery, Widely Different Rates
by Rob Gurwitt | Dec 26, 2011 12:00 am | Comments (16)
Each time John Dempsey Hospital performs a cardiac valve surgery, the hospital receives a median payment of $82,589 from Medicare – about $23,000 more than the median paid to Danbury Hospital for the same surgical procedure.
A pacemaker implant at Dempsey, part of the University of Connecticut, costs Medicare about $20,000—$2,200 more than Yale-New Haven, $3,500 more than Bridgeport Hospital and $6,300 more than the Hospital of Central Connecticut.
Federal reimbursements for surgical procedures swing widely among Connecticut hospitals, a C-HIT analysis of available Medicare data shows, with Dempsey receiving a higher rate than other hospitals for most procedures. Yale-New Haven, Bridgeport and Windham hospitals also were consistently among the top five in Medicare reimbursements, according to the data.
Experts say the variation in Medicare payments is due to a variety of factors, including the type of hospital (teaching or non-teaching), regional wages and salaries, the income mix and sickness of patients and the number of tests and services provided.
To read related story on consumers’ access to health care costs click here.
School Arrests Bring New Scrutiny, Reforms
by Lisa Chedekel | Dec 13, 2011 11:30 pm | Comments (3)
As a fifth grader at a New Haven magnet school in 2009, Jacob was watching a lot of “Ed, Edd n Eddy” shows on TV—a slapstick cartoon that features adolescent equivalents of the Three Stooges.
Maybe too many shows, his mother now says.
That October, she received a call saying her 10-year-old son was in the principal’s office with a police officer who was preparing to arrest him for giving a younger student— a girl—a wedgie on the school bus. His parents were dumbfounded.
“It was just surreal. You’re going to arrest a little boy over this?” said his mother, who asked that her name not be used to protect her son. She said Jacob, who had special education needs that she believed were not being addressed by the school, had been punched and injured in prior incidents that had never resulted in arrests. “It still brings up such anger and even tears at this point,” she said.
A C-HIT review of data collected by the Connecticut judicial department suggests that Jacob’s arrest, which was later dropped, is not unusual, especially in inner-city or overcrowded schools.
From March through May of this year, more than 700 arrests were made in Connecticut schools, two-thirds of them for minor offenses such as breach of peace or disorderly conduct, according to data obtained from the Court Support Services Division (CSSD).