As a Houston, Texas medical malpractice attorney, I handle cases throughout the Houston area, including care provided the hospitals in the Clear Lake/Bay area.
One of the hospitals in that part of town is Bay Area Regional Medical Center, which is located at 200 Blossom Street, Webster, TX 77598. This hospital opened in 2014, and has 104 staffed beds. It offers healthcare services including cardiac/heart and vascular, general surgery, neurology, neurosurgery, orthopedics, a 23-bed emergency room, bariatric/weight-loss surgery, gastric balloon procedure, an accredited chest pain center, cardiac catheterization labs, a women’s center (labor, delivery, and birthing), a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), and outpatient diagnostic imaging. It has around 500 physicians on its medical staff.
Quality of care concerns
Even for relatively-new hospitals, like Bay Area Regional Medical Center, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services send surveyors to conduct on-site inspections, interviews, and reviews of medical records to look for quality of care concerns. The goal of this federal program is to provide oversight to improve patient safety.
Since August 2016, Bay Area Regional Medical Center has received a total of 10 violations from Medicare/Medicaid.
The most recent violation was on September 28, 2017. The violation arose from the hospital’s failure to adhere to its grievance policy for seven out of nine sampled patients with documented grievances. A grievance is a formal complaint made by a patient or family member related to a quality of care concern. The Medicare/Medicaid surveyor found that two grievances were not even investigated, while for five grievances, patients did not receive a written response after the investigation was concluded.
As a former hospital administrator, I find it alarming that the Bay Area Regional Medical Center leadership failed to take advantage of the opportunity to obtain real-world, unfiltered information about the type of care being provided at the facility. In my experience, when hospital administrators do not take the grievance process seriously, an indifferent, lackadaisical attitude may spread to the nurses, techs, and doctors providing patient care.
On February 2, 2017, Bay Area Regional Medical Center received another violation for failing to follow its own grievance policy.
The last eight violations stem from the hospital’s failure to submit a complete report to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
In addition to these violations, for the time period of April 1, 2016, through March 31, 2017, Medicare/Medicaid found that Bay Regional Medical Center had a higher infection rate for Clostridium difficile (C. diff.), a hospital-acquired bacterial infection, than national benchmarks. The hospital missed the mark on four datasets collected by Medicare/Medicaid, including C. diff. upper confidence limit, observed cases, intestinal infections, and predicted cases.
www.painterfirm.com/a/481/Which-Houstonarea-hospitals-have-abnormallyhigh-infection-rates#tab-1
We are here to help
If you or a loved one has been seriously injured at Bay Area Regional Medical Center, or any other hospital in Texas, call the experienced attorneys at Painter Law Firm, in Houston, Texas, at 281-580-8800, for free consultation about your potential case.
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Robert Painter is a medical malpractice and wrongful death lawyer at Painter Law Firm PLLC, in Houston, Texas. He is a former hospital administrator who represents patients and family members in medical negligence lawsuits against hospitals, pharmacies, doctors, surgeons, anesthesiologists, and other healthcare providers. In 2017, H Texas magazine listed him as one of Houston’s top lawyers. He currently serves on the editorial board of the Texas Bar Journal.
