Even widely known, prestigious hospitals can slip up when it comes to providing high-quality patient experience and care. Paul Levy, healthcare blogger and former president and CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, outlined one of those times in a recent post on his blog, Not Running a Hospital.
One of Mr. Levy's friends was scheduled for a "tricky" procedure at a major academic medical center. "Knowing that the placement of the injection was critical, my friend specifically requested that the attending physician, rather than a trainee, administer it," Mr. Levy wrote.
But that's not what happened. According to Mr. Levy, a trainee completed the injection, without an attending in the room, and his friend's "physical condition reverted to a much earlier period, setting her back over a year in treatment progress."
His friend reported the issue to the attending and a hospital site manager, to little avail. "No one admitted that a mistake had been made or apologized in any way," Mr. Levy wrote. A physician brought in for a second opinion was rude, he wrote, and "the president of the hospital likewise was rude and unresponsive."
In the end, Mr. Levy's friend discovered the original attending knew things had gone wrong with the initial procedure, and the people she sought help from afterward were "protecting the attending." All of this occurred even though "this hospital is at the top of the list in U.S. News & World Report," Mr. Levy concluded.
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