Dive Brief:
- Yorkville Endoscopy on the Upper East Side of Manhattan is being investigated by the New York State Health Department after the death of comedian Joan Rivers.
- Rivers, age 81, was found unconscious and in cardiac arrest the morning of August 28 after undergoing a procedure on her vocal cords. The clinic called 911 early that morning and Rivers was transported to Mount Sinai Hospital where she spent this past week on life support.
- Rivers passed away on Thursday at Mount Sinai. The Health Department has declined to elaborate on details of the investigation, but reports have said it is a routine investigation and there is no suspicion of wrongdoing.
Dive Insight:
Healthcare providers should be accustomed to added scrutiny when caring for people in the limelight. When something goes wrong, as when Dennis Quaid's twins were accidentally given an oversized amount of blood thinner at Cedars Sinai, word gets out quickly. The New York Police Department investigates any death that is not caused by natural causes. The actual cause of death has yet to be determined.
Meanwhile, Karen Sibert, MD questions on the Health Care Blog if Ms. Rivers' death is perhaps a signal to out-patient clinics to be certain that they are in a position to provide the necessary emergency care if a procedure goes wrong.
"It may be that we’ve pushed outpatient care as far as it should go," Sibert writes. "We need to acknowledge that invasive procedures are just that—invasive—and that the medications used in sedation and anesthesia can be deadly when we least expect it."