Worcester Business Journal Special Editions

26 2017 Economic Forecast • www.wbjournal.com • Worcester Business Journal Each depositor is insured by the FDIC to at least $250,000. All deposits above the FDIC insurance amount are insured by the Depositors Insurance Fund (DIF). Cash Management " Your small business is our business." We know what it takes to own a business and we know you have your hands full. Let us take care of all your cash management needs, so you can concentrate on the business at hand. southbridgesavingsbank.com facebook/southbridgesavings 800-939-9103 - Bob Mangan AVP, Cash Management CHARLTON | HOLDEN | NORTH OXFORD | SOUTHBRIDGE | SPENCER | STURBRIDGE | WEBSTER | WORCESTER • Business Bank N' Pay SM • Remote Deposit Service • Credit Card Processing • Payroll Services H e a l t h C a re Wo rc e st e r | F r a m i n g h a m | c a p e co d 508.459.8000 | Fletchertilton.com Success! Congratulations to One Eleven Chop House, Restaurant of the Year winner. We are proud to serve as counsel to winners like One Eleven, and the entire Worcester Restaurant Group, our clients for 38 years. Muddled records lead to Saint Vs kidney mistake While denying that it was at fault in what led to the removal of an organ from the wrong patient over the sum- mer, Saint Vincent Hospital in Worcester could see Medicaid and Medicare payments terminated in December if patient safety deficiencies remain, according to state officials. According to reports from the state Department of Public Health (DPH) and federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the fallout stems from a July 20 surgery, where an error resulted in a kidney being removed from the wrong person at Saint Vincent. The surgeon — who had been working from a CT scan image of a tumorous kidney — was told from pathology results that the kidney was, in fact, healthy. What led to this error was, in some ways, a perfect storm in terms of coin- cidence, and a cautionary tale for the Central Massachusetts healthcare industry, about how the potential for such errors exists. It highlights the importance of locked-down patient safety procedures and accountability. The patient who had the kidney removed and the patient who should have had a kidney removed had the same name, and the same month and day of birth. Additionally, the DPH and CMS report says that the two patients had imaging procedures done on the same date. The first patient's CT scan was miss- ing from his or her medical record, but the wrong one was there instead, according to the DPH and CMS. According to the state and federal investigators' official report, the fact that the CT scan was missing was not unusu- al. A pre-admission testing unit nurse at Saint Vincent's said that staff have had difficulty getting reports and documents from doctors' offices. The report quotes this person as saying the issue had been ongoing "for a while, years." A Saint Vincent associate medical director was documented in the report saying that the patient's outside physi- cian was responsible for providing the CT scan. In addition, a previous inter- nal report cited in the investigation said that certain CT scans weren't properly displaying patients' birthdates on the operating-room monitor at Saint Vincent — a problem which the report says was fixed just recently. The hospital was told by the DPH Division of Health Care Facility Licensure that Medicaid and Medicare agree- ments will end Dec. 12 if deficiencies are not fixed. Saint Vincent Hospital spokeswoman Erica Noonan said the hospital was unable to give details on the incident but denied that the error occurred inside the hospital. Noonan cited HIPAA privacy rules and was unable to offer a status update on the affected patient. "The misidentification and scans … happened outside the hospital," Noonan said. "The hospital will meet all CMS guidelines and deadlines, and its Medicaid program is not in jeopardy." According to the report by the DPH and CMS showing both a summary of deficiencies and Saint Vincent's intend- ed fixes, the hospital's compliance plan "is not an admission by the facility that it agrees that the citations are correct or that it violated the law," but an effort to right the wrong as required by feder- al standards, Noonan said in an email. Urgent care growth Due to healthcare system changes that favor community-based care, the U.S. urgent care market value was expected to grow at a rate of 5.8 percent annually. Source: Harris Williams & Co. Continued from Page 25 Saint Vincent Hospital in Worcester $0 $5 $10 $15 $20 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 Projected market value (in billions) $14.5 $15.3 $17.0 $18.2 $18.8 $16.2

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