New York officials find Beth Israel Hospital violated cease-and-desist order amid closure
NEW YORK — Mount Sinai Beth Israel, a major New York hospital, violated a cease-and-desist order that bars the closure of any beds or services while the hospital’s permanent shutdown is pending regulatory approval, according to new findings from a state Department of Health investigation.
The findings corroborate information POLITICO has reported in a series of articles providing a behind-the-scenes look as the facility gets ready to shut its doors.
Investigators discovered the lower Manhattan hospital had stopped accepting certain stroke patients to its emergency department, canceled its on-call MRI service and halted outpatient surgeries following the state’s issuance of the cease-and-desist order in December, they wrote in their report made public late Monday.
The agency concluded Beth Israel was not maintaining appropriate resources for the delivery of patient care — a failure that “places all patients at risk for delay in treatment and services,” investigators added. They cited the hospital for inadequate staffing of registered nurses on one of its inpatient medical-surgical units.
Mount Sinai plans to dispute the findings, a lawyer for the health system wrote in a court filing included in an ongoing lawsuit over the hospital’s closure, which is planned for July. The hospital was given 10 days to provide a written response and must agree with the Health Department on a plan to correct any violations ultimately found.
“We are reviewing the NYS Department of Health survey and plan a very detailed and robust response to the state’s allegations," said Loren Riegelhaupt, an outside communications consultant representing Mount Sinai, in a statement. "Since September, when we were required by the DOH to announce the planned closure of the 16th Street campus of Mount Sinai Beth Israel, we have had significant staff departures which put severe pressure on our ability to safely care for our patients. Throughout this process we have been in close contact with DOH and ensured they were fully aware of why and how all decisions were made."
State investigators also documented several transfers of patients from Beth Israel's emergency department to other Mount Sinai hospitals, a pattern highlighted in a POLITICO investigation that found Beth Israel has increasingly been moving seriously ill patients who need procedures it no longer provides to other hospitals.
In one case, an unresponsive patient with intracerebral hemorrhage — a particularly deadly kind of stroke that involves bleeding inside the brain — was transferred because Beth Israel's intensive care unit was full. A different patient brought to Beth Israel's emergency department, who was unresponsive and diagnosed with septic shock, was transferred due to “space limitation and staff limitation” in the intensive care unit, according to Monday's filing.
In another instance, a stroke patient was transferred elsewhere due to lack of staff in interventional radiology. An unidentified staffer told investigators that Mount Sinai’s neurointerventional radiology doctors used to come to the emergency department to treat patients there, eliminating the need for a transfer, but were directed to no longer come to Beth Israel to treat certain stroke patients after Dec. 31.
During a tour of Beth Israel’s radiology department during an on-site probe in late January — revealed by POLITICO — investigators found “the procedure rooms and patient waiting areas were empty,” adding, “there were no patients or staff,” they stated in their report.
The report stems from a seven-day investigation by the Health Department in January into Beth Israel’s provision of emergency care.
In December, the Health Department determined Mount Sinai had been unlawfully closing beds and services at Beth Israel and instructed the hospital not to initiate any closure of beds or services without state approval. The hospital could otherwise be subject to civil penalties of $2,000 per day.
"The basic truth remains: the dilapidated 16th Street hospital is simply not sustainable and continues to hemorrhage staff and resources. We must close MSBI and nothing about today’s allegations changes these facts,” Riegelhaupt added.
