Dive Brief:
- Merit Health Central Hospital, based in South Jackson, MS, has received a warning letter from CMS stating Medicare funding would be cut if "deficiencies" continued. The agency could terminate the hospital from the program as soon as June 5.
- The agency claims that the hospital failed to provide on-call physicians available to stabilize treatment, provide adequate medical screening and decide appropriate patient transfers. CMS associate regional administrator Sandra Pace wrote CEO Lisa Dolan than the problems "constitute an immediate threat and jeopardy to the health and safety of any individual who comes to your hospital with an emergency medical condition."
- The hospital states corrections have already been made, after allegations first arose two years ago. The hospital maintains a position of no wrongdoing, stating transfers can be due to several factors, including hospital full capacity.
Dive Insight:
The hospital has a two-star rating from patients, the same as another local hospital. A ProPublica report based on 2014 data found that the hospital clocked in average wait times and average times before ED patients were admitted that were better than both the U.S. and Mississippi times. So is this a question of a lag-time in reporting or yet another case of inconsistent measures of quality of care?
The agency's allegations are serious, including turning away trauma victims 89 times in 2013, redirecting psychiatric patients 73 times in 2013, and a trauma surgeon who took 49 minutes to arrive at the ED to treat a gunshot victim—almost twice the maximum time permissible under state guidelines. The patient died before the surgeon arrived.
Merit Health Central Hospital says it has made the necessary corrections to maintain current standards. Some of the hospital improvements include new education and documentation requirements, new clinical review protocols, updated policies, and procedures and reviewing surgeon response times.
Jana Fuss, director of communications, Merrit Health, said when analyzed with the CMS Hospital Compare website, "most of our hospital's emergency department care measures are consistent with or better than the state average and other area hospitals, including the average time patients spend in the ER before being seen by a healthcare professional, being admitted or being sent home. Given these actions, the hospital is confident that we will be in good standing with Medicare and that funding will continue."