What in the health care is going on in Detroit??

Hospitals in Detroit, MI may lose Medicare funding, which would be financially devastating to the hospitals. Is hospital care in Detroit at risk of going defunct? Sometimes, I think, we lose sight of how important our local hospitals are to our communities.

The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) notified DMC Harper University Hospital and Detroit Receiving Hospital that they may lose Medicare funding because they are allegedly not in compliance with “physical environment regulations.”

42 C.F.R. § 483.90 “Physical environment” states “The facility must be designed, constructed, equipped, and maintained to protect the health and safety of residents, personnel and the public.”

CMS will give the hospitals time to submit corrective action plan, but if the plans of correction are not accepted by CMS, Medicare will terminate the hospitals’ participation by April 15, 2019 (tax day – a bad omen?).

The two hospitals failed fire safety and infection control. Section 483.90 instructs providers to ensure fire safety by installing appropriate and required alarm systems. Providers are forbidden to have certain flammable goods in the hallways. It requires sprinkler systems to be installed. It requires emergency generators to be installed on the premises. Could you imagine the liability if Hurricane ABC destroys the area and Provider XYZ loses power, which causes Grandma Moses to stop breathing because her oxygen tube no longer disseminate oxygen? Think of the artwork we would have lost! Ok, that was a bad example because there are no hurricanes in Detroit.

Another important criterion of the physical environment regulations is infection control, which, according to the letters from CMS, is the criterion that the two hospitals allegedly have failed. Each hospital underwent a survey on Oct. 18th when the alleged deficiencies were discovered.

“We have determined that the deficiencies are significant and limit your hospital’s capacity to render adequate care and ensure the health and safety of your patients,” stated the Jan. 15 letters to the hospitals from CMS. CMS informed the hospitals they had until Jan. 25 to submit a plan of correction. It is unclear whether the hospitals submitted these plans. Hopefully, both hospitals have a legal team that did draft and submit the plans of correction.

Michigan is a state in which if Medicare funds are terminated, then Michigan will terminate Medicaid funds automatically. So termination of Medicare funding can be catastrophic. Concurrently, Scott Steiner, chief of Detroit Receiving Hospital, is resigning (shocker).

Detroit must have something in the water when it comes to health care issues in the news because, also in Detroit, a police task force Monday removed 26 fetuses from a Detroit Medical Center (DMC) morgue, all of which were allegedly mishandled by Perry Funeral Home. Twenty of the bodies taken from the DMC cooler had dates-of-birth listed from 1998 and earlier, with six dating to the 1970s. The earliest date of birth of a discovered fetus was Aug. 11, 1971.

State authorities are looking into another case of dozens of infant remains allegedly hidden for years in a DMC hospital. News articles do not mention the DMC hospital’s name, but one cannot help but wonder whether the two incidents – (1) Detroit hospitals failing infection control specifications; and (2) decomposing bodies found in a hospital – are intertwined.

Detroit has to be winning a record here with health care issues – Medicare audit failures in hospitals, possible loss of Medicare contracts, possible suspension of Medicaid reimbursements, and, apparently decomposing fetuses in funeral homes and hospitals.