Dive Brief:
- St. Mary's Medical Center is denying allegations made in a CNN news report that deficiencies in the hospital's pediatric cardiac surgery program have led to nine infant deaths in the last four years.
- The hospital claims it told the reporter who wrote the story that the data she was using was inaccurate, but CNN ran the story anyway.
- The CNN report has led to an investigation of the hospital's program by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Dive Insight:
In a statement, St. Mary's said that CNN reported an inaccurately calculated mortality rate based on an incorrect assumption of its program's volume. "As a result, the mortality rate calculated by Ms. Cohen is exaggerated, and the comparison between that exaggerated mortality rate and the national average mortality rate as calculated and reported by the STS [Society of Thoracic Surgeons] is completely erroneous," the statement says.
Even if the hospital can get CNN to formally admit it made a mistake, this is likely to be PR nightmare for St. Mary's for quite some time. They're going to have to come up with a way to quickly repair their tarnished image in order to convince patients who saw the report that their program is safe. It's also going to take some time to appease CMS.