Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, which became famous for trying to save the life of President John F. Kennedy following his assassination in 1963, has spiraled into a morass of poor medical care and faulty practices. Federal regulators are considering canceling all federal funding for Parkland, something rarely done to a hospital of its stature.

 

Inspectors began examining Parkland after the death of a psychiatric patient earlier this year—a fatality that was not reported to the Texas Department of State Health Services or the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).

 

In addition to finding that the rights of the patient were violated repeatedly by Parkland staff, federal regulators and local reporters discovered patients wandering lost in hallways and in pain, children being discharged without medical screening or stabilizing care, emergency room patients lying in dirty bedding, and improper handling of medical waste that led to a risk of “severe infection and possibly subsequent death.”

 

In the program to provide care for homeless patients, some medications were mislabeled or outdated, including polio vaccines that were beyond their expiry date.

 

Late last week Parkland leaders, in an effort to avoid losing eligibility for federal health care funding, offered up a reform plan that includes rewriting hospital policies, hiring ten more nurses, and retraining ER nurses, who were accused of not taking vital signs and failing to monitor patients who were waiting to see doctors.

 

Parkland has until September 2 to demonstrate that it is implementing reforms. If CMS is not satisfied, the hospital could lose all Medicare and Medicaid funding.

-Noel Brinkerhoff, David Wallechinsky

 

Federal Report Details Risk to Patients at Dallas' Parkland Hospital (by Miles Moffeit, Sue Goetinck Ambrose, Reese Dunklin and Sherry Jacobsen, Dallas Morning News)

Reports Detail Dallas Hospital on Brink of Losing Federal Funds (by Andrew Van Dam, Covering Health)