RI not ready to disclose 'deficiencies' found at Eleanor Slater Hospital
PROVIDENCE — The administrators of the state-run Eleanor Slater Hospital are unwilling to make public the "deficiencies" cited in a Jan. 14 report by the federal agency that holds the purse strings on Medicare and Medicaid dollars.
A spokesman said the state agency that runs the hospital has until Jan. 31 to present a "plan of correction" and will not make the findings public until then.
The report reflects the findings by the team of federal investigators who paid a week-long visit to the hospital in mid-September.
A hospital spokesman explained the visit this way: an eight-member team from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services was there "verifying that the hospital meets Medicare conditions of participation."
Medicare conditions of participation are federal regulations with which particular health care facilities must comply in order to participate — that is, receive funding from — the Medicare and Medicaid programs.
The visit came to light after the latest incident of self-harm by a patient in the psychiatric wing of the state hospital. A spoon that was not retrieved after a meal, as required, led to a serious eye-gouging incident.
More recently, there has been a surge in COVID cases among patients and staff.
More: Nearly a quarter of Eleanor Slater patients tested positive for COVID in last 10 days
The Eleanor Slater Hospital is not the only health care facility in Rhode Island that has seen an uptick in COVID cases. But it was the only hospital in the state that acknowledged calling in COVID-infected staffers in to work over the New Year's weekend to avert a staffing crisis.
On Friday night, the state belatedly disclosed that 60 hospital employees - close to 10 % of the staff - tested positive for Covid during the week that began on Jan. 5, when there were 47 reported cases among patients.
But Thomas Corrigan, a lawyer for Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals, told The Journal the state "must decline" to disclose where the infected employees had been allowed to work and where wthin the two-campus hospital the subsequent Covid outbreaks took place.
He cited the federal patient privacy act known as "HIPAA" as the reason for the refusal.
Another complicating issue: the state's license to operate the hospital expired on Dec. 31, 2021, according to the Rhode Island Department of Health website.
In response to a Journal inquiry, Health Department spokesman Joseph Wendelken said the application to renew the license has been filed. He has not yet said when.
More: 'Code triage' declared at Eleanor Slater Hospital as COVID cases mount
On Thursday, a spokeswoman for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services confirmed that the hospital had been given the long-awaited findings by the CMS inspection team.
She told The Journal: "CMS completed a review of the findings from the...survey report completed on September 17, 2021. On January 14, 2022, the results of the findings were released to Eleanor Slater Hospital."
She said: "The hospital is required to submit an acceptable Plan of Correction within 10 days from date of receipt of the notification of survey findings."
Randal Edgar, a spokesman for the Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals, subsequently confirmed:
"BHDDH received a CMS report with statements of deficiencies on Jan. 14. As part of the process, CMS is providing the opportunity for dialogue about the report, and BHDDH looks forward to seeking clarification on some of the findings."
He said the department would comment when "this process is complete."
BHDDH has left other questions unanswered for weeks, including repeated requests for a full accoutning of COVID cases among patients and staff.
The nonresponses elicited an apology this week, and a promise of after-the-fact responses, from BHDDH's legal counsel, Corrigan.
Having refused for a week to disclose the mounting number of COVID cases on the Cranston and Burrillville campuses of the state's "last resort" hospital for patients with severe medical and psychiatric conditions, Edgar issued this statement on Jan. 12:
Late this past week, he reported: 18 patients tested positive between Jan. 9-18.
Edgar would not disclose where on the two campuses the cases have been clustered, how many staff have tested positive and how frequently the hospital was doing surveillance testing as the state Department of Health requires whenever there is an outbreak.
He also refused to say how many patients became so sick they required transfer to another acute-care hospital in the state, except to say: "There have been very few and in an abundance of caution out of respect to patient confidentiality, we’re declining to say more about that right now."
On Thursday, he again refused to disclose the number of infected staff, the locations where the cases were clustered and the number, if any, transferred to another hospital.
In a related development, the CMS website documents an earlier critique of hospital patient monitoring that enabled a brain-damaged patient to wander off.
On Oct. 1, CMS posted: "There are 14 Hospitals in Rhode Island. CMS cited 35.7% of them for a Substantial Deficiency in the last six months."
Eleanor Slater Hospital was one of them.
This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: McKee administration won't disclose Eleanor Slater Hospital findings
