At a hearing before the Texas Senate Health and Human Services Committee, the director of pulmonary and critical care medicine at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas declined to comment on why Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan was not correctly diagnosed on his initial visit to the hospital's emergency department.
Gary Weinstein, MD, instead told lawmakers hospital officials are still examining the incident.
"The events preceding this current admission are being thoroughly reviewed," he said during the hearing. "The results of that review will be made available once they're compiled."
Mr. Duncan presented at the hospital's emergency department Sept. 25. He was sent home, but returned three days later by ambulance and tested positive for Ebola. He was admitted and placed in isolation to undergo treatment. The hospital announced his death Wednesday.
The hospital's parent system, Arlington-based Texas Health Resources has since been criticized for not making the diagnosis on Mr. Duncan's initial visit and not placing him under quarantine, potentially exposing people he came into contact with between hospital visits to the deadly virus.
The hospital had issued a statement last week explaining a flaw in the EHR workflow meant even though Mr. Duncan told the admitting nurse he was recently in Liberia where the Ebola endemic is raging, that information was not displayed to the physician. The hospital has since backed off that statement, though has not offered another explanation.
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