St. Luke & # 039; s in Houston replaces the director of heart transplant surgery after the program loses...
St. Luke & # 039; s in Houston replaces the director of heart transplant surgery after the program loses Medicare funds
Baylor St. Luke's Medical Center announced Friday that it has hired two new cardiac surgeons to run its heart transplant program to regain its Medicare certification.
The surgeons, Dr. Kenneth Liao and Dr. Alexis Shafii, will jointly assume leadership positions previously held by Dr. Jeffrey Morgan, director of heart program surgery since 2016. A spokeswoman for St. Luke's said Morgan still she is a member of the medical staff at St. Luke's, but she did not respond directly if he will continue to perform the transplants.
Morgan refused to comment through a representative, and the hospital did not make Liao or Shafii available for interviews.
the personal announcement arrives two months after the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services cut funding for heart transplants in St. Luke's, long considered one of the best hospitals in the country for cardiac care. The federal agency concluded that the Houston hospital had not done enough to correct the problems that led to a high rate of patient deaths after transplants in recent years.
Liao arrives at St. Luke after several years as the best heart transplant surgeon at the University of Minnesota Medical Center in Minneapolis. When he arrives in January, he will be St. Luke's senior heart transplant surgeon, and will be the hospital's new chief of cardiothoracic and circulatory mechanical assistance transplants.
Shafii joined St. Luke's in September after a stint as surgical director of the lung transplant program at the University of Kentucky Transplant Center. At St. Luke's, Shafii has already assumed the position of director of heart transplant surgery.
In addition, St. Luke's announced that it hired Deborah Maurer, a transplant program administrator in Chicago and Arizona, to serve as vice president of transplants, a newly created position that oversees the clinical and administrative operations of all organ transplant programs.
"The addition of two expert surgeons and an experienced executive who specializes in the administration of the transplant program demonstrates Baylor St. Luke's continued and growing commitment to heart and lung transplants," said Gay Nord, president of St. Luke's. , in a statement announcing the new hires.
These changes continue a series of research reports from ProPublica and the Houston Chronicle in trouble in San Lucas. In recent years, the articles revealed that the hospital's cardiac program performed a large number of transplants that resulted in deaths or unusual complications while continuing to promote themselves based on their historical past.
In 2015, seven of the 21 heart transplant recipients in St. Luke died within one year of their surgeries, significantly higher than the national average. Hospital leaders said the program slowed down that year and identified subtle ways to improve care. In early 2016, the hospital hired Morgan to replace the long-time leader of the program, Dr. O.H. "Bud" Frazier.
St. Luke officials have said that the one-year survival rate of the heart transplant program improved in 2016 and 2017 under Morgan's leadership. But some heart transplant recipients have suffered unusual complications since then, ProPublica and Chronic Research found., including two that had the main veins sewn closed during surgery, according to numerous sources. In one of those cases, Morgan has said that previous treatments for a man's cancer complicated his surgery. He has refused to comment on the other, citing the patient's privacy.
Several doctors have dropped out of the program in recent years, including a couple of leading cardiologists who said they have expressed concern to administrators about the care provided to patients with heart failure and started sending some to other hospitals for transplants.
In a previous interview and answers to written questions, Morgan defended his heart leadership program, which he said has improved under his supervision.
"We've only had one year with results below expectations in the recent past, 2015, and that has been corrected," Morgan said earlier this year.
In June, following the reports of ProPublica and Chronicle, San Lucas temporarily suspended the heart transplant program to review the deaths of two additional patients in May after heart transplants. Hospital officials reactivated the program after two weeks and said they had not encountered "systemic problems related to the quality of the program."
Two months later, Medicare cut funding after concluding that the leaders of San Lucas had not done enough to solve the problems that led to poor surgical results. The termination prohibits the hospital from billing federal health plans for heart transplants and, according to experts, could threaten the overall viability of the program. San Lucas is appealing the decision.
In announcing the new staff members on Friday, hospital officials characterized the measures as part of the "ongoing efforts to strengthen the program that began in January." When reporters met with Nord and other St. Luke leaders that month, they did not mention any ongoing information. Efforts to make improvements. Instead, they said that the heart program had already completed the necessary changes to improve the results and was operating at a high level.
In Friday's statement, Nord said the hospital would continue to strive for improvements: "Promoting our hospital programs is an endless process, and these latest appointments are part of our ongoing commitment to our patients, our doctors, our staff and our community. . "
When asked about Morgan's future role, spokeswoman Vicki Amalfitano said: "Dr. Morgan's status has not changed," emphasizing her continuing position in St. Luke's medical staff and in the faculty of Baylor College of Medicine, where he holds the academic title of head of cardiothoracic transplant and circulatory support.
When asked if Morgan had been replaced as surgery director of the hospital, Amalfitano said: "The announcement is about the new staff, so I would love to focus on them."
In a follow-up email, she clarified: "I can confirm that Dr. Morgan no longer holds the title of" Surgical Director, Heart Transplant and Mechanical Circulatory Assistance "at Baylor St. Luke's Medical Center.
Alexander Aussi, a transplant consultant based in San Antonio, has been critical of the management of St. Luke's problems within his heart program. But he said the changes in surgical leadership announced on Friday seem to indicate that the hospital is now taking significant steps to improve.
He also applauded St. Luke's decision to add a senior executive to ensure that all hospital transplant programs meet regulatory requirements.
"These changes are a good indication that the main administration is committed to the reconstruction of the program," Aussi said, noting that the hirings represent a multimillion-dollar commitment to a transplant program that must still regain Medicare's approval.
"Given that they actually recruited a star surgeon and made these other changes, it's obviously a commitment from senior management to move the program forward."
Tell us your story: Are you an employee, patient or family member of a patient at Texas Medical Center? We would like to hear from you about your experience. Please Fill in this confidential questionnaire..
.
!function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s)
{if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod?
n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)};
if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0';
n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0;
t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];
s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window, document,'script',
'https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js');
fbq('init', '369524843414444');
fbq('track', 'PageView');
.
SOURCE LINK ERESVIRAL.COM https://www.beviral.online
Comentarios
Publicar un comentario