Napa's Queen of the Valley Medical Center And Other Hospitals Fined For Improper Care

NAPA, CA -- State healthcare regulators on Thursday announced several fines against four Bay Area hospitals for failures to properly care for patients.

On April 20, the California Department of Public Health issued six fines totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars against Napa's Queen of the Valley Medical Center, the Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in San Francisco, Sequoia Hospital in Redwood City and the California Pacific Medical Center's St. Luke Campus in San Francisco.

Queen of the Valley received three fines -- more than any other hospital on the list -- totaling $225,000 for cases involving three different patients who were the victims of substandard care in 2013.

In one case, a patient came into the hospital's heart monitor, or telemetry, unit while she was recovering from surgical repairs to facial fractures.

She had gauze or cotton packed into her nasal cavity and her jaw was wired shut.

The hospital failed to make sure nursing staff "provided ongoing assessments" of the patient's changing condition, including bleeding down the back of her throat and trouble breathing, according to a 2015 Public Health report.

The patient eventually suffered "a respiratory arrest," sustained a brain injury due to lack of oxygen and she slipped into a "persistent vegetative state," according to the report.

The state fined Queen of the Valley $100,000 for its lapses in this case.

In another case, for which the hospital was fined $50,000, the state found that nursing staff failed to provide continuous heart and breathing monitoring and breathing assistance for a patient who ultimately died.

"We deeply regret that these incidents occurred," Queen of the Valley's Chief Executive Larry Coomes said in a April 20 statement. "In keeping with our commitment to a culture of integrity, active compliance and the
delivery of the highest-quality care, we self-reported these events to the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) at the time and took immediate action to prevent any such event from happening in the future."

The hospital submitted plans, accepted by state health officials, that are intended help it avoid similar problems in the future.

The Kaiser hospital in San Francisco received two fines totaling $147,000 for a pair of 2016 incidents in which two patients died.

In other cases involving Bay Area hospitals, Sequoia Hospital was fined $47,452.50 for mistakenly removing a patient's ovaries in 2016 and the California Pacific Medical Center's St. Luke Campus was fined $47,452.50 for not properly caring for a woman who fell and hit her head in the hospital and subsequently died following brain surgery.

Both hospitals have also submitted plans to the state that are intended to help them avoid similar mistakes in the future.

Bay City News contributed to this report/Image via Shutterstock