Our firm represents many patients of Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital and Carilion New River Medical Center (not to mention Carilion Giles Community Hospital, Carilion Tazewell Community Hospital, Carilion Stonewall Jackson Hospital, and Carilion Franklin Memorial Hospital) in claims of medical malpractice and medical negligence. So, you might think I am biased if I reported that too many of Carilion’s patients develop infections and other conditions that could have been avoided.
Well, you don’t have to believe me just look at what Medicare recently determined. Carilion Clinic is losing $1.5 million in federal Medicare payments this fiscal year as part of a government-imposed penalty for having too many patients develop infections and other avoidable conditions. The report did not disclose what those other avoidable conditions were but my guess would be retained surgical sponges/needles/equipment, giving the wrong medications to the wrong patients, giving the wrong dosage of medicine, operating on the wrong patient or the correct patient but the wrong surgical site, allowing patients to develop pressure sores, etc.
According to an article in the Roanoke Times, “Carilion Medical Center is one of 15 Virginia hospitals to be penalized this year, according to an analysis of government data by Kaiser Health News, a nonprofit national health policy news service.” There are over 70 hospitals in Virginia. To be one of the 15 hospitals in Virginia financially penalized for an unacceptably large number of patient complications is not a very good grade for any healthcare proivder.