Senator Wants Stronger Hospital Oversight Board
By Ridgely Ochs, Newsday, Melville, N.Y.
Apr. 11–State Sen. Kenneth LaValle said he plans to reintroduce legislation by mid-May to put “more teeth” into Stony Brook University Medical Center’s oversight board that until recently was not informed of a case in which diseased organs were transplanted from a 15-year-old Sag Harbor boy.
He said he also wants to introduce a bill to ensure that transplant doctors statewide are following best practices.
LaValle (R-Port Jefferson), chairman of the Senate’s higher education committee, has said he was unhappy he did not learn until January from the SUNY Chancellor’s office — and not from the hospital — about the case of Alex Koehne.
Alex, after a diagnosis of partly treated bacterial meningitis, died at Stony Brook last March, and his parents donated his organs. They requested a brain autopsy, which a month later found Alex had died of a rare lymphoma. Two of the organ recipients died of the lymphoma; two others had to have his donated kidneys removed and underwent chemotherapy.
The state health department investigated the Koehne case and determined that Stony Brook followed all protocols.
“The first order of business is to ensure that the Quality Assessment Review Board has some real teeth in it,” LaValle said. “Whatever is put into statute, transparency and communication is a centerpiece.”
Matt Cody, head of the hospital’s Quality Assessment Review Board, said he also learned of the case in January — and not from the hospital.
Stony Brook said it would work with the senator.
“In regard to the legislation, we haven’t yet seen what is going to be proposed but we’ll be happy to talk to Senator LaValle about it,” said the hospital in a statement. “We share a common goal — the most effective SBUMC possible. In regard to communication and transparency, we think we have made a tremendous effort in that area.”
Last April, LaValle introduced a bill to establish an oversight board after the deaths of three children at Stony Brook in 2006. The deaths led to the state Department of Health issuing 36 citations and shutting down the hospital’s pediatric cardiac surgery program.
LaValle’s proposal was nixed in the final hours of budget negotiations. Instead, the SUNY chancellor’s office said it was establishing an oversight board. Campus President Shirley Strum Kenny named 13 people to the board.
The board, which meets quarterly, was never informed of the unusual Koehne case as it played out and the recipients died. It was first briefed at its March meeting. Cody declined to comment yesterday on LaValle’s proposal.
LaValle said he would introduce a bill to ensure transplant programs follow best practices: ” … Everyone should have the knowledge of what best practices are, and patients should be protected by the knowledge that the procedures used are standard procedures.”
Dr. David Conti, chairman of the state’s Transplant Council, which advises the health commissioner, said it had already initiated — before the Koehne case — a project “to see if there is a way to decrease chances of disease being transmitted.”
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