Legal Eagle Eye Newsletter for the Nursing Profession

  The hospital was cited by state Department of Health inspectors for violation of Federal Medicare conditions of participation found at 42 CFR §482.90.

  A transplant center must actually use its written patient selection criteria in determining a patient’s suitability for placement on the waiting list or for transplantation.

  If a transplant center performs living donor transplants, the center must also use its written donor selection criteria in determining the suitability of candidates for donation. 

  The transplant center must document in the living donor’s medical records the living donor’s suitability for donation. 

   Federal regulations do not specify the actual criteria to be used for donor selection. 

  This facility was given an extensive plan of correction which assigned responsibilities for different aspects to different staff members at the transplant hospital. 

  Nevertheless, the Department of Health is not a professional health care provider as defined in the state’s peer-review privilege statute. The Department’s investigation and conclusions are not privileged.  SUPERIOR COURT OF PENNSYLVANIA June 5, 2015

  The kidney transplant recipient and the donor both sued the hospital after  each was diagnosed with Hepatitis C following the transplant.

  The recipient sued for being infected with Hepatitis C from the donor. 

  The donor sued over a blood sample not drawn for medical diagnosis as she was told but drawn for forensic purposes after the recipient’s infection was discovered, and over losing a kidney she should not have been allowed to donate.

  The donor is the recipient’s significant other and the mother of his child.

  The hospital’s selection criteria required donors to be screened to rule out  Hepatitis C along with a host of other factors being taken into consideration.

  Three physicians independently reviewed the donor’s chart and concluded she was suitable.  However, the chart contained no documentation that donor Hepatitis C screening had been done.

  Two months later, just before the actual transplant procedure, a sample of the donor’s blood was sent to the lab for Hepatitis C screening specifically ordered by the transplant surgeon himself.

  A report came back from the lab that the sample contained an insufficient quantity of blood for the Hepatitis C test.

  The lab report was faxed to the nurse who served as transplantation coordinator.  She simply entered it in the donor’s chart and made a note that another sample had to be obtained and sent to the lab for Hepatitis C screening. That was never done. A week later the transplant went ahead.

  There has yet been no court ruling whether the hospital is or is not liable.

  The Superior Court of Pennsylvania ruled the state Department of Health is not a professional health care provider and thus the particulars of its investigation do not fall within the peer review privilege and are available to the patients’ attorneys.

  The Court ruled the details of the hospital board’s meeting to discuss the matter fall under the peer review and attorney-client privileges and will not be disclosed.  Yocabet v. Hospital, __ A. 3d __, 2015 WL 3533851 (Pa. App., June 5, 2015).

More references from nursinglaw.com

http://www.nursinglaw.com/transplantation2.pdf

http://www.nursinglaw.com/organdonor.htm

http://www.nursinglaw.com/organ-donation-beneficiary-kidney-given-another.pdf

http://www.nursinglaw.com/organ-transplantation-psychiatric-illness.pdf