PROFITS OVER PATIENTS

Most recent stories in PROFITS OVER PATIENTS

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  NBC News

  

  At HCA hospitals, the person monitoring your vital signs may be doing it for 79 other patients too

  NBC News - By Gretchen Morgenson

  The hospital staffers who watch heart rhythms are usually “telemetry” technicians, not nurses. At HCA Healthcare facilities, they may monitor as many as 80 patients at a time. After three harrowing weeks in the hospital, Terry Downs, 68, was on a path to recovery. A former Boeing engineer who helped …

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  NBC News

  

  Telemetry is key for treating patients. Improper monitoring can lead to tragedy.

  NBC News

  Telemetry is a critical tool in keeping patients alive, but without proper monitoring, it can lead to tragedy. A former executive with HCA, the nation’s largest hospital chain, described an “epidemic of telemetry mishaps” at some of its facilities. HCA says “telemetry saves lives and that is why we …

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  NBC News

  

  Attorney general, doctors and nurses hit HCA over patient care at N.C. hospital

  NBC News - By Gretchen Morgenson

  The attorney general's office says HCA is not living up to its purchase agreement and may face a lawsuit if it does not make fixes within 40 days. Four years after it bought Mission Hospital, an 815-bed facility in Asheville, North Carolina, HCA Healthcare is under fire in the region, threatened …

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  NBC News

  

  CEO of Fla. hospital that some doctors called unsafe and unclean steps down

  NBC News - By Gretchen Morgenson

  Photos of Bayonet Point hospital provided to NBC News by insiders showed ceiling leaks, equipment held together with tape, backed-up sinks and cockroaches in the OR. The chief executive of HCA Florida Bayonet Point, the Hudson, Florida, hospital whose physicians characterized it as unsafe and …

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  NBC News

  

  Doctors say HCA hospitals push patients into hospice care to improve mortality stats

  NBC News - By Gretchen Morgenson

  Transfers to hospice care from HCA's facilities grew faster than the national average, while HCA's "in hospital" deaths were lower than average, data shows. As Marisol Perez fought for her life in a Texas hospital in autumn 2021, her mother, Alma Salas, sat with her every day praying. Perez, then …

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  NBC News

  

  HCA hospitals accused of pushing patients toward hospice

  NBC News

  At some HCA hospitals, staff are pressed to get patients into hospice with the goal of improving hospital performance metrics, according to six nurses and 27 doctors. NBC News’ Cynthia McFadden shares one patient’s story where doctors urged her mother to transfer her to end-of-life care but the …