Memorial Medical Center's Culture of Safety Seems Shaky

Sometimes within minutes I receive two emails so different I get dizzy.

Maybe you read my two recent columns opining that Memorial Medical Center seems to have become totally “Profits uber alles!” since Apollo Global acquired it.

I sought MMC’s views. They dallied. Tuesday, MMC’s email refused any interview but proffered a public statement that didn’t answer specific questions I’d asked. It started, “Memorial Medical Center has been part of the Las Cruces community, caring for residents of Doña Ana County and the surrounding region, since 1950.  The dedication to quality care and community on which our hospital was founded has unwaveringly guided our team for nearly 75 years – and has only been strengthened . . .”

It stressed community. And excellence of staff and care.

Moments later came an email from friends, who’d described a recent visit to MMC’s ER regarding the wife’s sudden extremely high blood pressure. The ER doctor treated and released her. Hospitals make you leave by wheelchair, even if you’re there about a hangnail. Not that day. Standing by the main door, she weakened and fell, striking her head. Two weeks later, it still hurt. I didn’t write of that. Could happen anywhere.

Tuesday’s email discussed their longtime doctor, Dr. Louis Benevento, who’s doctored here since 1996. Board-certified, Fellow of the American College of Physicians. Practicing with, and loyal to, Memorial, since long before Lifepoint. He thought MMC, even under Lifepoint, was a good hospital. “You could propose an idea and they’d listen, and discuss the pros and cons.”

Recently, he was handed a letter telling him, “You are retiring April 16^th.” MMC kindly added that it would give him a retirement party later in April. He declined.

He doesn’t know why. He gets paid based on RVUs: the loot he brings in. And he got a bonus for 2023.

When I pressed, his best guess was maybe they wanted to save expenses by using nurse practitioners. I asked what that meant for patients. He said some NPs are great, others less so. The two he works with are good, know what they know and, importantly, know what they don’t know, and thus sometimes consult him. Now he’ll be gone, no longer filtering cases, so the ones they can’t handle they’ll kick upstairs to some sub-specialist who may bill at a higher rate.

MMC’s treatment of Dr. B hardly displayed its deep commitment to community and appreciation of its illustrious staff. Canning him follows the new industry trend that really listening to patients is wasting time. The handling of it was inappropriate.

He sounded like a good doc. My friends like him. Sources praise his care for patients. Even now, he offered no unpleasant tales about MMC’s problems. “I thought the one thing I didn’t have to worry about was MMC.”

Except, . . .

MMC's statement accused me of ignoring MMC’s many good points “to support “a false narrative” – but didn’t identify a single statement MMC considers false. I’m not ignoring “the hard work of [y]our staff, physicians and medical professionals, and the realities of the market,” but expressing concern that those folks must function in an environment that appears not to encourage a culture of safety.

Sadly, MMC’s treatment of Dr. B may describe MMC’s priorities more accurately and eloquently than its statement does.

Can (or will) Apollo find a fairer balance between investors’ profit and the safety of patients, doctors, and nurses?

                                                       – 30 – 

 

[The above column appeared Sunday, 11 February, 2024, in the Las Cruces Sun-News and on the newspaper’s website ("MMC's Treatment of Patients/Staff Should Raise Questions"), as well as on KRWG’s website under Local Viewpoints. A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version will air during the week on KRWG (90.1 FM) and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM, streaming at http://www.lccommunityradio.org/).]

[This is the third and last in a series of columns.

I regret that MMC never found the spirit to talk with me. For years, when Dael and I were helping our older friend, Bud Wanzer, that’s where we took him, and worked with doctors and staff there. It was the hospital Bud and I had known for fifty or sixty years. I mean, that’s what “the hospital” meant to us, for long after there was another here. I do not mean to say that everything about MMC is bad. I know good people who work there. I do see, as do others, the problems posed by private equity ownership of our health care entities. While one might wish we still had public hospitals, of which Memorial General Hospital was one, even Catholic hospitals or corporate hospitals have some checks and balances, with requirements of public reporting and with possible push from shareholders and journalists to do the right thing. What concerns me most deeply is the loss of a culture of safety, in which medical folks can opine openly, without fear of reprisals, and where oversight boards include some folks whom the hospital doesn’t fully control. “I had to take my complaint to the person who’d caused it,” is a sad sentence to hear.

So I hope the Medicare people take a good look at whether or not there’s any fraud going on; I hope Lifepoint (and, ultimately, Apollo) consider more collegial and patient-centered management in the future, and I hope the state legislature and the governor look into what can be done with laws and/or regulatory oversight. I also hope the City and County, each still with a board-member at MMC, raise their level of effort to see beyond the rosy picture management presents. ]

[I don’t know everything. I wouldn’t want to have to run a hospital. We’re kind of all in this together. I’m sure hearing MMC management’s views on some of these issues would have rounded out the picture. So, as I say, I’m sorry we couldn’t have a conversation. And remain willing, if MMC disagrees with anything I’ve written.]