Dive Brief:
- St. Mary's Medical Center in West Palm Beach, FL, has announced it will permananty shut down its pediatric cardiothoracic surgery program.
- The announcement came after a yearlong CNN investigation, which found that the hospital had a mortality rate for open heart surgeries of 12.5%, more than three times the national average.
- Since 2011, at least nine babies died after having heart surgery at St. Mary's. Another baby was left paralyzed.
Dive Insight:
According to CNN, a state panel recommended last summer that St. Mary's stop performing heart surgeries on infants younger than 6 months and that the hospital stop performing complex heart surgeries on children of any age. However, the surgeries, and also the deaths, continued.
In a statement issued on Monday, St. Mary's said, “After much consideration, we have made the decision to permanently close our Pediatric Cardiothoracic Surgery Program. We are proud of the work that has been done and the lives that have been saved. This is the decision of the hospital and not based on a decision or recommendation by the State of Florida or any regulatory agency. The inaccurate media reports on our program have made it significantly more challenging to build sustainable volume in our program."
Dr. Michael Black, chief surgeon of St. Mary's pediatric open heart surgery program, says he is planning to sue CNN for defamation.