By Walter F. Roche Jr.
A patient at a Blair County hospital was kept waiting for more than eight hours for transfer to a larger facility and first became unconscious and then went into cardiac arrest before the transfer finally took place.
The recent incident at the Penn Highlands Tyrone hospital was detailed in a Sept. 19 report just made public by the state Health Department.
The seven-page report cites the facility for "failure to ensure that transfer arrangements were made" for patients requiring transfer to higher level facility.
The report notes that under a federal law, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, hospitals are required to promptly assess and treat emergency patients within 30 minutes of arrival.
The eight hour delay came as workers at the Tyrone facility attempted to transfer the patient, who eventually had to be intubated, to another Penn Highlands facility rather than seek a bed at the closest available facility. Eventually the patient was sent to a competing UPMC hospital.
The hospital filed a plan of correction addressing some but not all of the violations. Hospital officials did not immediately respond to questions about the report.
The same report states that in five of 19 cases reviewed the hospital failled to provide prompt triage treatment. In one case the patient wasn't triaged for 158 minutes.
State health surveyors also found that hospital personnel were treating emergency patients in an area only authorized for triage.
An unnamed employee at the facility told health department officials "the facility struggles "when there is a surge of patients that need to be triaged.
Contact: wfrochejr999@gmail.com
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