Parkland’s Woes Not as Bad as Morning News Wants You To Believe, Ctd.

I’ve been meaning to update that post from last week since the day after it went up. That’s when I got an email from Bob Moos, a public affairs specialist for the Region 6 office of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), correcting an error I made in the post.

After asking the regional and national CMS offices for stats on how many “immediate jeopardy” citations it issues, and after not hearing back from them, I quoted this story, which says that CMS doesn’t keep those stats. Well, Region 6 does. After reading my post, Moos sent me the following email:

The Dallas Region 6 office of CMS oversees five states: Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico and Oklahoma.

There have been six immediate-jeopardy citations against hospitals (including Parkland and Methodist) in Region 6 since the beginning of the current fiscal year (Oct. 1, 2010). Specifically, there have been four in Texas, one in Arkansas and one in Louisiana. There are 957 hospitals in Region 6 — 517 of those are in Texas. During the previous fiscal year, there were two immediate-jeopardy citations against hospitals in Region 6. Both were in Louisiana.

So such “IJ” citations can be considered out of the ordinary.

Hope that helps.

Helps indeed. So despite Methodist’s getting an IJ citation right on the heels of Parkland’s, such citations are, indeed, rare. I was wrong to say they aren’t. What I don’t understand at this point is why the Morning News didn’t publish those same Region 6 numbers when it ran its big Sunday story on Parkland, instead choosing to quote experts. When I talked to Moos the day after I put up my post, I asked him whether anyone at the News had asked for those IJ stats. He said that, in fact, a reporter had called with that request after I put up my post. Moos couldn’t recall whether they’d previously asked for the numbers. I am forced to conclude they hadn’t, which is odd.

Anyway, mea culpa. I was wrong. And I learned something about Region 6.

I’ve learned something else since putting up that last post about Parkland. CMS’ IJ citation has lengthened wait times in the ER. Here’s an example a Parkland ER doc gave me:

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