DaVita Gets More Patients

DaVita increases patient load, monitors still in place
Police: Probe of former nurse is ongoing

By JESSICA SAVAGE
The Lufkin Daily News

Sunday, October 05, 2008

Three months after state health officials re-opened DaVita Lufkin Dialysis Center following an extensive investigation into a spike in patient deaths, the 120-patient capacity center has increased its patient load from nine to 42 as of earlier this past week, said a state health spokesman.

The center is continuing to operate with four state monitors in place, including a physician, two nurses and a technician, and was found clear of state deficiencies previously cited for during a recent state follow-up survey, said Doug McBride, spokesman for Texas Department of State Health Services.

State and federal health officials conducted a six-week investigation of the 700 S. John Redditt Drive Lufkin facility in mid-May following the facility's closure April 28 after a spike in patient deaths and health complications. The center re-opened July 2 after fixing staffing and operations problems to meet state-required standards.

Lufkin Police, involved in a separate investigation beginning the same time of the state and federal investigations, arrested Kimberly Clark Saenz, 34, a former DaVita nurse, and charged her with two counts of aggravated assault for allegedly intentionally injecting patients with bleach. No further charges are expected to be filed and the investigation is still ongoing with no estimation on when it will be finished.

"This is a very complicated investigation with a huge amount of medical information involved and requires us to go outside our normal investigative resources to seek medical expertise for review of the facts," said Lufkin Police detective Sgt. Steve Abbott.

Once the police investigation is completed it will be presented before an Angelina County grand jury, which will decide whether or not to issue an indictment for Saenz said police spokesman Lt. David Young.

Saenz's attorney, John Henry Tatum II, was not available for comment this past week.

The state health investigation concluded in June while the Center for Disease Control, a branch of Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services which approves federal reimbursements to dialysis centers who comply with its standards enforced by the state health departments, has not yet released to the state an epidemiology report conducted at DaVita, McBride said. The state expects to receive a copy when a final report is published, the spokesman said.

A state health survey conducted in mid-May at DaVita and released in early July stated DaVita officials failed to monitor care provided to patients and did not immediately detect an increase in adverse events related to health and safety. It also found the facility did not keep complete and accurate patient medical records, including patient deaths which were not properly documented. Causes of death or possible death trends from September 2007 through April 2008 were not documented, the survey stated.

In a previous interview, DaVita spokesman Michael Chee said the state survey conducted in May found no link between the deficiencies outlined in the report and patient deaths in early April. The state, which acts as a regulatory department making sure health facilities are operating within state guidelines, imposed a Level 3 corrective plan of action — the highest it can give out — at the Lufkin facility.

The state found DaVita had a higher patient death rate in 2007, at 27 percent, than the state average of 19.9 percent, according to the report. Thirty-two patient deaths occurred between Jan. 1-Dec. 31, 2007, according to a previous interview with David Wright, spokesman for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Region VI office. And since the start of the new year through the facility's closure date, 16 patients have died, Wright said.

However, dialysis patients do have a higher death rate than the general population.

Dialysis is a procedure administered to people experiencing certain degrees of kidney failure, in which a machine is used to filter waste products from a person's blood — a function the kidneys are no longer able to perform. A typical dialysis patient receives three three-hour treatments a week.
Vote for this story!

Find this article at:
http://www.lufkindailynews.com/hp/content/news/stories/2008/10/05/DaVita_update.html