CNN Uncovers Infant Heart Surgery Malpractice in Florida

A CNN investigation has uncovered a high heart surgery malpractice rate for children at a West Palm Beach, FL hospital. The facility claims its infant mortality rate in its pediatric open heart surgery is “consistent” with the national average and claims the network tried to mislead the public with distorted calculations.

One patient, a seven week old baby girl weighing just 10 pounds, had surgery to widen a narrowing in her aorta. Shortly afterwards she was unable to move her legs and doctors couldn’t explain why. Her mother was terrified she would never walk again, when a stranger in an elevator overheard her talking with family and friends and warned her to get her daughter out of the facility.

The woman was visiting a family member at the hospital and told the mother a staff member had whispered to her about problems with the facility’s pediatric heart surgery program. At the time, the program was less than one year old and an alarmingly high percentage of infants were experiencing complications — many of them fatal.

The mother was disturbed by the news and relayed the information to her husband. The couple decided to call their daughter’s cardiologist and request to have her transferred to another hospital.

Heart surgery malpractice

Much to the parents’ surprise the cardiologist adamantly agreed that moving the infant to another hospital was a good idea. He quickly brought the transfer papers to the hospital and urged the parents to hold strong in their decision and not to let any of the staff talk them out of it. The couple was confused as to why no one had told them their infant daughter could be in danger at that particular hospital.

The little girl was moved to another hospital 80 miles away the next day. Two and a half years later, the child is a paraplegic. The parents had no idea the staff at the hospital operating on their child has so little experience performing complicated heart surgeries on newborns. In fact, the facility’s mortality rate for babies having heart surgery was three times the national average by the end of 2013.

At least eight infants have died since the pediatric open heart surgery program at the hospital was started in December 2011. Many of their parents are now asking why they weren’t warned that the hospital was so inexperienced with performing such difficult and risky operations.

Hospital’s alarmingly high death rate revealed

The hospital keeps its death rate under wraps. To calculate it, CNN had to file a Freedom of Information request with the state of Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration. According to the documents obtained by the network, the hospital performed 48 open heart surgeries on children and babies from 2011 to 2013. CNN found that six infants died and calculated the death rate for open heart surgeries as 12.5% more than three times the national average of 3.3% cited by the Society of Thoracic Surgeons.

CNN tried to get in touch with the hospital for comments regarding reported heart surgery errors, but all those contacted declined.

One mother whose two-month-old son was one of the six infants noted above, says the hospital’s pediatric surgeon recommended a second procedure after the first one didn’t go well. The baby died shortly after the second surgery. The surgeon told the mother he loved her and her son and planned to write the tragedy up for a medical journal, because it was such an unusual situation. The mother said the doctor had told her he’d only lost one other patient before her son, when in fact her child was the sixth to die after surgery at the hospital. Many suspect that medical negligence is to blame.

On June 2, 2015 a ninth baby who had heart surgery at the hospital passed away after the procedure.

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