Fla. hospital probed over babies' deaths after heart surgery
Corrections and Clarifications: An earlier version of this story misstated the mortality rate for open heart surgeries at St.Mary's Medical Center in West Palm Beach.
Federal regulators announced Friday that they are investigating a Florida hospital over the deaths of several infants who had heart surgery in the past four years.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services began the probe after a CNN report about the deaths at St. Mary's Medical Center in West Palm Beach, which is owned by Tenet Healthcare. Most of the babies were Medicaid patients.
CNN reported Monday that eight babies died between 2011, when the hospital began the operations, and December 2013. A ninth baby died Tuesday and a 10th was left paralyzed, CNN said.
CNN calculated the mortality rate for open heart surgeries at 12.5%, triple the national average, but said the hospital has disputed that figure.
"We take these allegations very seriously. CMS is actively investigating these complaints," Aaron Albright, a spokesman for the federal agency, wrote in an email to USA TODAY. "Because of the ongoing investigation, we cannot comment further."
St. Mary's Medical Center said in a statement Friday that it had not yet been contacted by the agency, "but we will fully cooperate in any survey or evaluation by CMS."
The Agency for Health Care Administration, which handles the state's $23 billion Medicaid program serving 3.48 million Floridians, said its investigators visited the hospital five times over the past six months.
The agency "will continue to work with our partner agencies to hold this hospital accountable to the patients they serve," press secretary Shelisha Coleman said in an email Friday.
In April 2014, CNN reported, the Florida Department of Health sent a team of cardiac experts to review the hospital's pediatric heart-surgery program. The head of the panel, Jeffrey Jacobs, from Johns Hopkins University, recommended St. Mary's stop performing heart surgeries on babies younger than 6 months, but the hospital continued.
In a letter to employees after the latest death, hospital CEO Davide Carbone voiced support for the program and its heart surgeon, Michael Black, CNN reported.
"The patients we serve are afflicted with severe life-threatening conditions, and it is impossible to eliminate the risk of mortality," Carbone wrote.