HOUSTON - Four-year-old Arion Guajardo faces a lifetime of issues thanks to a choking episode earlier this year.
“By the time we got to the hospital, he was already unconscious,” said his mother, Carisma.
She’s relieved her son’s 12-week hospital stay didn’t add to his injuries.
“He had so many tubes going into his lungs, into his arteries, his heart,” said Guajardo. “So that was one of my concerns, that he would get an infection.”
The rates of infections and other issues have put 61 Texas hospitals on an annual list of funding cuts compiled by the Centers for Medicare and Medicare Services.
The list includes these 12 hospitals in the Houston area:
-AD Hospital East, LLC
-Aspire Behavioral Health Hospital
-Bayshore Medical Center
-CHI St. Luke’s Health
-Baylor College of Medicine ME
-Doctors Hospital Tidwell
-Emil J Freireich Cancer Center
-Hopebridge Hospital
-Memorial Hermann Texas Medical Center
-The Methodist Hospital
-St. Luke’s Hospital at The Vintage
-St. Luke’s The Woodlands Hospital
-Sugar Land Surgical Hospital LLP
A KHOU 11 News researcher found that facilities are fined if they have higher infection rates than 75% of all other hospitals.
The most common were colon and hysterectomy surgery infections, along with IV and catheter infections.
Five of the hospitals were cited for not submitting information. In some cases, millions in Medicare dollars will be lost.
“I consider myself very fortunate,” said Guajardo. She’s glad penalties exist to keep patients like her son from developing new conditions during hospital stays.
“I don’t know what would happen is something else would’ve gone wrong,” said Guajardo.
Here are statements from hospitals that have responded to our requests for comments:
Bayshore Medical Center
Bayshore Medical Center has been caring for our community for nearly 55 years, and we embrace efforts to measure and share our quality performance. We continually seek to provide even better care, and we have a number of quality improvement efforts that support our mission to lead health care and improve lives. Our strategic priorities include reducing hospital acquired infections and hospital acquired conditions and we have shown significant progress in 2016. In collaboration with our medical staff, our healthcare providers utilize Evidence Based Practices for the prevention of infections. We conduct daily reviews of our patients who may have a potentially increased risk of infection. Daily reviews afford the ability to be proactive against hospital acquired infections. Because of our ongoing clinical quality initiatives for improvement, Bayshore Medical Center has been recognized by the Joint Commission as a Top Performer for two years in a row, an honor which is only achieved by 37% of America’s hospitals. In the past year, Bayshore Medical Center was also reaccredited as a Joint Commission-certified Primary Stroke Center and a Stroke Provider by the State of Texas. The hospital also received the Silver and Silver-Plus awards from Mission: Lifeline for achieving specific quality improvement measures outlined by the American Heart Association for the treatment of patients who suffer from severe heart attacks. In addition, Bayshore Medical Center completed a full CMS validation survey with minimal deficiencies.
CHI St. Luke's
CHI St. Luke’s Health places great emphasis on providing an environment of safe, compassionate, high quality healthcare for our patients and the communities we serve. The data reported by CMS during the July 1, 2013 to June 30, 2015 timeframe does not reflect the significant changes we’ve made to improve patient safety and quality outcomes over the past year. We are committed to continually monitoring and improving patient care.
To compare hospitals on Medicare's website, click here.