SARASOTA - Sarasota Memorial Hospital announced several policy and procedural changes aimed at improving patient safety Wednesday, four weeks after state regulators found unlocked medicine carts and cabinets, missing blood transfusion records and other problems in a surprise visit.
The hospital, which has had a series of medical errors in recent months, will retrain its nurses and pharmacists, hire an executive director of patient safety and make other changes in the wake of the Agency for Health Care Administration's findings.
"We are going to do everything we can to make this hospital a safer place," said Dr. Duncan Finlay, president and CEO of Sarasota Memorial Health Care Systems.
Between Sept. 30 and Oct. 2, AHCA inspectors found unlocked medicine cabinets and carts easily accessible by patients and visitors; medicine carts with prefilled, unlabeled syringes; missing records of blood transfusions during surgery; and nurses administering shots drawn by another nurse, a violation of standard practice.
The findings put patient safety at risk and indicate "the hospital does not have a housewide quality assurance program to improve health outcomes and prevent medical error," the agency said in a 54-page report.
The agency's unannounced visit was triggered by three well-publicized incidents this year: A heart catheterization was performed on the wrong patient on March 11; a patient died June 28 after being infused with the wrong type of blood two days earlier; and between Aug. 30 and Sept. 9, four patients were given Epinephrine, a stimulant often used to stop asthma attacks and heart attacks, instead of Decadron, a steroid their doctors prescribed to reduce inflammation.
Inspectors found other problems, including a patient with a faulty artery catheter that was not discovered until an hour into bypass surgery; anesthesia staff reading newspapers while their patients were under anesthesia; and missing records on 10 units of blood given to three patients.
