By Felisa Cardona
The Denver Post
Posted: 08/15/2010 01:00:00 AM MDT
Eighteen years before surgery scrub technician Kristen Parker infected 18 patients at Rose Medical Center with hepatitis C, another employee infected patients the same way at a Texas hospital later owned by one of the owners of Rose.
A lawsuit filed in Denver District Court states that Hospital Corporation of America, which partly owns Rose Medical Center, should have been more careful with the way drugs were stored and secured after its earlier lawsuit.
Parker, 27, is serving 30 years in federal prison after she injected herself with the painkiller fentanyl that was meant for surgery patients. She then filled the syringes with saline and placed them back on carts, resulting in the patients being injected with the infected needles during surgery.
The latest lawsuit, filed Aug. 3, claims anesthesiologists left the drugs in unlocked surgery rooms — in violation of hospital policy and state and federal statutes.
"Every single surgery room at Rose had controlled substances that were intended for vulnerable surgery patients lying around for drug addicts like Parker to divert, use and fill with saline," said patients' attorney Hollynd Hoskins.
Five lawsuits are pending against Rose Medical Center, and one has been settled, said Cara Harshberger, spokeswoman for the hospital.
The first case set for trial is in June before Denver District Judge Herbert Stern.
The latest suit was filed by Hoskins on behalf of a Denver mother of three who is using the initials L.K. because she does not want her medical condition made public.
For six minutes, a syringe filled with the painkiller fentanyl sat unsecured in a surgery room before L.K.'s procedure on Feb. 13, 2009. The lawsuit says that is when Parker stole the drug and left the infected needle behind.
The anesthesiologist, Dr. Herbert N. Chado, named as a defendant in the lawsuit, unknowingly injected L.K. with the contaminated needle, and months later, the woman learned that she was infected with hepatitis C.
L.K. underwent interferon treatment and, at first, responded to the medication, but the virus has since come back.
In 1994, the Colorado Board of Medical Examiners placed Chado on five years of probation for abusing the drug Sufenta, an opiate. Chado, who pursued treatment, did not practice medicine from 1993 to 2001, state records show.
Chado did not return a call seeking comment about the lawsuit.
Minutes before L.K. was infected, Chado failed to lock the surgery room and didn't have the fentanyl in his sight, the suit says.
"We have had and continue to have rigorous controls in place to ensure medication security," Harshberger said. "This includes having pass- code-protected computerized medication systems in each operating room, with methodical auditing of the usage of that equipment, providing ongoing education for staff and physicians regarding medication security, and exploring options for packaging of medication."
In 1991, scrub tech David Wayne Thomas stole fentanyl from the now-defunct Mid-Cities Surgi-Center in Bedford, Texas.
The hospital was owned by Medical Care America at the time of the incident but was acquired by Hospital Corporation of America in 1994, Harshberger said.
Thomas, who was infected with hepatitis C, pleaded guilty to stealing the drugs and served three years of an eight-year sentence, according to a 1995 Fort Worth Star-Telegram article. It is not clear whether Thomas knew he was infected with the virus, as Parker did, when he was contaminating the needles.
Civil lawsuits were brought by 48 patients against Hospital Corporation of America and the anesthesiologists who were responsible for securing the medication. The cases were settled.
Legal experts told the newspaper the settlements could have surpassed $100 million.
Harshberger said Rose remains committed to helping patients, including paying for the testing and treatment of those affected by Parker's actions.
"The criminal actions of this former employee put our patients at risk, and for that we were truly saddened and angered," she said.
Felisa Cardona: 303-954-1219 or fcardona@denverpost.com
Source
No comments:
Post a Comment