Vegas clinic may have sickened thousands

[flashl]

Source: Yahoo

Nearly 40,000 people learned this week that a trip to the doctor may have made them sick.

LAS VEGAS -In a type of scandal more often associated with Third World countries, a Las Vegas clinic was found to be reusing syringes and vials of medication for nearly four years. The shoddy practices may have led to an outbreak of the potentially fatal hepatitis C virus and exposed patients to HIV, too.

The discovery led to the biggest public health notification operation in U.S. history, brought demands for investigations and caused scores of lawyers to seek out patients at risk for infections.

Thousands of patients are being urged to be tested for the viruses. Six acute cases of hepatitis C have been confirmed. The surgical center and five affiliated clinics have been closed.

"I find it baffling, frankly, that in this day and age anyone would think it was safe to reuse a syringe," said Michael Bell, associate director for infection control at the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Yahoo

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080305/ap_on_re_us/hepatitis_exposure;_ylt=AgRL.fvn7FVzf9MO9x2RW1NvzwcF

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Clinics' reuse of needle a cost saving measure? :shrug:

[Posteritatis]

1. There are words, but they all have four letters. (nt)

[Bilbo Heugan]

24. What do you call a doctor who finished last in his class?

Answer: Doctor

[Posteritatis]

26. Ow! (nt)

[LeftyMom]

2. What the hell?

Needles are pretty cheap, and the risk of spreading hepatitis C or HIV is so high. Why on earth would anybody with access to plenty more reuse needles?

[superconnected]

9. Perhaps someone who doesn't like the poor.

[BlueIris]

16. Or who just flat-out did not give a rat's ass who might die as a result of their shitheadedness.

[dbonds]

3. Anyone know which clinics

I had blood transfusions and many following blood tests at UMC and its associated clinics Dec 06. But I no longer live in Vegas. And for the record, UMC is a hell hole.

[flashl]

5. .

In Las Vegas, clinic staff told inspectors they had been ordered by management to reuse the vials and syringes. Labus described the practice as an unwritten, but long-practiced policy.

Investigators were told the practice was an attempt to cut costs, according to a letter of complaint from the city, which revoked the facility's business license Friday. Five other facilities affiliated with the Endoscopy Center of Southern Nevada also had their licenses revoked.

[dbonds]

12. I missed that in the first reading of it.

Now I have to look up who did the endoscopy on me.

[flashl]

14. Wishing good news for you. nt

:hug:

[Warpy]

4. Cost saving? Probably not. Laziness? yes.

Both the needle and the drug vial should have been discarded after one patient use.

They broke technique twice, once reusing a needle and contaminating the contents of a vial, then again when they used that vial of medicine for a second patient.

The only things they saved were the time it took to unwrap a clean syringe and the time it took to sign out another vial of medication for a second patient.

This one has hit home. I talked to a former coworker who's in a panic because her hubby went to that clinic while they were living there.

[superconnected]

10. No, they know better.

This is an attempt at infecting people.

Would anyone on this thread not call the health dept if they worked at a place that orders the re-use of needles? I doubt it.

This is blantantly trying to hurt people.

[Warpy]

11. Oh, balls.

Nobody wants to lose a license to practice and no profitable clinic wants to go out of business.

Never claim conspiracy for anything you can chalk up to either laziness or ignorance.

[eppur_se_muova]

15. You left out incompetence and greed.

The "Four Horsemen" of our corporatist society are now complete.

[superconnected]

27. What medical professional on any level is not going to know this is wrong?

How many AREN'T going to blow the whistle?

I'm not buying this happened for 4 years at a clinic with nobody saying a thing. I'm assuming more than two people work at that clinic.

[Warpy]

33. I have a feeling it was an MD doing this

and any nurse who spoke up would simply be fired.

Docs have different views of sterility than nurses do and are more likely to develop sloppy technique. I saw enough of it in 25 years to be comfortable with that statement. 95% of docs have good technique. It's that other 5% that are huge problems.

I think what happened is that somebody did finally speak up after s/he was fired and got that clinic looked into.

[superconnected]

28. Infact, I'm going to say the average american knows this is wrong.

I wouldn't bat an eye about shutting down that clinic and having them lose their license if I worked there, I know the people need their pay check, but I'm not going to buy that they need it to the point of putting others in serious health danger.

[liberal4truth]

31. Amen to that !

[Princess Turandot]

17. I got caught up in one of these last spring in NYC..

along with 4,000+ other people. It was pretty alarming opening the letter I got from the DOH. My tests were all negative thankfully.

http://www.hepatitis-central.com/mt/archives/2007/06/new_hepatitis_c_4.html

The source was a 65 year old anesthesiologist who worked for a anesthesia group practice that provided services to my GI doctor for in-office procedures as well as at over a dozen other offices and hospitals. From subsequent things I read it seemed most likely that it came down to flat out laziness: not changing the syringe when withdrawing another dose of medication for the same patient from a multi-dose vial of the anesthesia med. No problem for that patient, just the next two or three. It turned out that the anesthesiologist had his license suspended but stayed 'with monitoring terms and medical competency evaluation and training' for three years beginning in 1999, for flat out negligence while working in Rochester NY: not monitoring patients while they were medicated, ignoring med histories of unfavorable reactions to certain medications etc. When I took a good look at him after my procedure in 2003, I swear he looked like he was coming off of a bender.

(Edited typo.)

[hedgehog]

6. Shouldn't some people be up on manslaughter charges? nt

[liberal4truth]

18. Yes, people need to be imprisioned for this outrage. What's a life worth?

Hell, we stick drunk drivers in jail for a "likely to cause death or maiming" charge.

Why should these people be immune to the same kind of justice?

Surely, some of these victims have been handed a death/illness sentence by the actions of a few.

[Posteritatis]

20. The cost of a syringe, apparently. :P (nt)

[liberal4truth]

30. How right you are. And how sad for all the folks who become ill because of this.

[Cobalt Violet]

35. Someone has to die first.

Hep C can take decades to kill. But it does kill 1/5 of the people who have it.

[MadMaddie]

7. And this went on for years....Where was the State Public Health

when this was going on. Shouldn't they have been doing spot checks on all facilities?

[Blue_Tires]

23. asleep...didn't care or looked the other way

profit margins, laziness and indifference will be the death of us all...

i honestly want to know the manager who gave this the go-ahead...this person needs to have their name, address, phone number and family members printed for the world to see

[madrchsod]

8. they were billing the insurance companies

and others for those needles...ever see an itemized medical bill anymore?

[eib1]

13. Welcome to Bushworld!

Quote:
LAS VEGAS -In a type of scandal more often associated with Third World countries, a Las Vegas clinic was found to be reusing syringes and vials of medication for nearly four years. The shoddy practices may have led to an outbreak of the potentially fatal hepatitis C virus and exposed patients to HIV, too. end quote.

No, I'm not surprised in the least.

[Hugabear]

19. Welcome to corporate run health care!

Anything to save a few dollars. What's more surprising is that this hasn't happened more often as hospitals and insurance companies put the squeeze on doctors and nurses to save more and more money.

[B3Nut]

21. Oh this is interesting:

"The clinic's majority owner, Dipak Desai, a political contributor and member of the governor's commission on health care, has refused to comment on the allegations. "

Can anyone look into this guy? Who wants to bet his contributions were to the GOP side of the aisle?
On edit: Nevada gov. Jim Gibbons was Olberman's "Worst Person Of The World"....twice!

Lord love a duck what a corporate crony: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Gibbons_%28United_States_politician%29

Oy vey. Life in Bushistan....

[Thor_MN]

29. Looks to be an equal opportunity offender

$17250 to Ds, $14,250 to Rs

Contributor Date Amount Recipient
DESAI, DIPAK MD 11/3/1999 $1,000 Bayh, Evan D
DESAI, DIPAK 6/26/2001 $1,000 Berkley, Shelley D
DESAI, DIPAK 7/14/2002 $500 Berkley, Shelley D
DESAI, DIPAK 6/13/2003 $1,000 Berkley, Shelley D
DESAI, DIPAK 2/21/2004 $500 Berkley, Shelley D
DESAI, DIPAK 3/7/2005 $1,000 Berkley, Shelley D
DESAI, DIPAK K 6/25/2005 $500 Berkley, Shelley D
DESAI, DIPAK K 2/18/2007 $1,000 Berkley, Shelley D
DESAI, DIPAK 9/19/1993 $500 Bryan, Richard H D
DESAI, DIPAK 10/18/1993 $500 Bryan, Richard H D
DESAI, DIPAK 6/7/2000 $1,000 Carper, Tom D
DESAI, DIPAK 5/23/1994 $250 Cooper, Jim D
DESAI, DIPAK 3/31/1999 $1,000 Gore, Al D
DESAI, DIPAK 2/17/1994 $1,000 Kennedy, Edward M D
DESAI, DIPAK 4/11/1995 $250 Kerry, John D
DESAI, DIPAK 11/30/1995 $250 Nelson, Ben D
DESAI, DIPAK 9/7/2000 $1,000 Nelson, Ben D
DESAI, DIPAK 5/9/1998 $1,000 Reid, Harry D
DESAI, DIPAK 6/29/2001 $1,000 Reid, Harry D
DESAI, DIPAK 8/19/2003 $1,000 Reid, Harry D
DESAI, DIPAK 8/30/2007 $700 Reid, Harry D
DESAI, DIPAK 6/10/1993 $300 Robb, Charles S D
DESAI, DIPAK 12/23/1993 $500 Rockefeller, Jay D
DESAI, DIPAK 11/23/1999 $250 Sarbanes, Paul S D
DESAI, DIPAK 3/15/1996 $250 Torricelli, Robert G D
DESAI, DIPAK 4/23/1994 $250 Briare, John M R
DESAI, DIPAK DR 7/23/2003 $2,000 Bush, George W R
DESAI, DIPAK DR 6/5/1998 $1,000 Chairez, Don R
DESAI, DIPAK DR. 10/14/1998 $1,000 Chairez, Don R
DESAI, DIPAK DR 10/16/1997 $1,000 D'Amato, Alfonse M R
DESAI, DIPAK DR 6/8/1995 $1,000 Dole, Bob R
DESAI, DIPAK 4/12/1996 $1,000 Ensign, John R
DESAI, DIPAK 9/9/1996 $250 Ensign, John R
DESAI, DIPAK 10/24/1996 $500 Ensign, John R
DESAI, DIPAK 10/29/1997 $1,000 Ensign, John R
DESAI, DIPAK 2/4/1998 $1,000 Ensign, John R
DESAI, DIPAK 6/10/1998 $1,000 Ensign, John R
DESAI, DIPAK 6/10/1998 ($1,000) Ensign, John R
DESAI, DIPAK DR 3/15/2000 $2,000 Ensign, John R
DESAI, DIPAK DR 3/22/2000 ($1,000) Ensign, John R
DESAI, DIPAK 1/17/2005 $2,000 Ensign, John R
DESAI, DIPAK 3/30/2006 $1,000 Heller, Dean R
DESAI, DIPAK 9/10/1996 $250 National Republican Congressional Cmte R
DESAI, DIPAK 10/15/1998 $250 National Republican Congressional Cmte R

[area51]

22. But we *are* a third-world country.

Why else do we not have single-payer, and we allow thousands of people to die who aren't rich enough to afford medical care?

[LeftCoast]

25. As an RN I am utterly horrified by this story

This goes against EVERYTHING I have ever been taught. I can't understand how any RN would do this. Any RN involved in this will almost certainly lose their license and they may very well be looking at prison time. That goes for the MD's involved in this as wel.

[Neshanic]

32. So those people who think WalMart having clinics is great can jump in anytime.

[kelligesq]

34. kick it