Becker's Clinical Quality & Infection Control

5 INFECTION CONTROL & PATIENT SAFETY Physicians claim Mississippi children's hospital had 'pervasive mold and cockroaches' By Ayla Ellison M ore than 30 physicians have le Batson Children's Hospital, part of Jackson-based University of Mississippi Medical Center, in recent years, including several pediatricians who are now working for a new local competitor. is move has prompted litigation, which calls into question the physicians' motives for breaking away from the hospital, according to e Clarion Ledger. Here are seven things to know: 1. At least five former UMMC pediatric phy- sicians now practice at Mississippi Center for Advanced Medicine, which was founded by Spencer Sullivan, MD, who resigned as med- ical director of Batson Children's Hospital's Hemophilia Treatment Center in 2016. 2. UMMC filed a lawsuit last July against MCAM, Dr. Sullivan and a former pediatric rheumatologist, Nina Washington, MD, who joined the new clinic. e lawsuit alleges the two physicians violated their noncompete agreements with UMMC when they le to join the new practice. e hospital has been damaged by the physicians' "contract breaches, trade secret misappropriation and tortious conduct," the lawsuit states, accord- ing to the report. 3. However, the physicians claim the hospital violated its contract before Dr. Sullivan resigned and started the new practice by failing to "provide facilities, equipment supplies, and staff required for Dr. Sullivan and Dr. Washington to perform their respective duties," according to the physicians' counterclaim. 4. e physicians allege the staffing and facilities provided by UMMC were inad- equate. "In addition to various sanitary issues at Batson, such as pervasive mold and cockroaches, Dr. Sullivan's hemophilia clinic space on the third floor was entirely unacceptable," according to the physicians. A UMMC executive allegedly told Dr. Sullivan the hemophilia clinic space "looked like something in the former Soviet Union." 5. Former UMMC geneticist Omar Ab- dul-Rahman, MD, told The Clarion Ledger it was normal to see cockroaches at Batson Children's Hospital and that the hospital staff had designated cockroach killers — employees who were responsible for removing the bugs. 6. UMMC says the physicians' accusations are false. "Not surprisingly, Dr. Sullivan and Dr. Washington provide no facts to support their defamatory allegations," UMMC said in a filed response to the physicians' counterclaim. "And if the al- legations had a shred of truth, defendants would have made them before UMMC sued them. In fact, neither Dr. Sullivan nor Dr. Washington expressed any patient safety concerns in their resignation letters." 7. UMMC alleges Dr. Sullivan used its resources and patient lists to develop his own practice in the months before he resigned, and that his decision to leave was motivated by the opportunity to personally enrich himself, not by poor conditions at the hospital, according to the report. n Jackson Health had most MRSA infections in US for 2017 By Mackenzie Bean M iami-based Jackson Health System reported 61 methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus infec- tions for the year ending in June 2017, a higher tally than any other U.S. hospital, according to CMS data cited by the Miami Herald. CMS assessed infection data for nearly 4,800 hospitals nationwide between July 2016 and June 2017. Of the 186 hospitals or health systems assessed in Florida, seven fell below the national standard for MRSA, including Jackson Health, which contains the following three hospitals: • Miami-based Jackson Memorial Hospital • North Miami Beach, Fla.-based Jackson North Medi- cal Center • Miami-based Jackson South Community Hospital While Jackson Health came in below the national stan- dard for MRSA rates, the health system did score at or above the national benchmark for five other types of common infections. Lilian Abbo, MD, chief of infection prevention at Jackson Health, acknowledged 2017 MRSA infection rates were higher than expected, but said the figures fail to account for the high prevalence of MRSA in Miami-Dade County or the size of the health system's caseload. She noted Jackson Health treats a high volume of patients at risk for MRSA, such as nursing home residents or trauma and dialysis patients. "We know there has been a problem with MRSA," Dr. Abbo told the Miami Herald. "There's a high prevalence in the community. We are taking measures to improve, and we have demonstrated that we can do it as we have done with other [hospital-acquired infections] in the past." Jackson Health implemented new protocols to address MRSA infection rates, which include improved hygiene and cleaning practices, active surveillance measures for patients deemed high-risk for infections, and a root-cause analysis for every infection that does occur, according to the Miami Herald. n

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