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ngd- We are cereal boxes in the supermarket of healthcare…
Newark Beth Israel acted after our report that its transplant program kept a patient alive to improve its metrics, while barely consulting his family.
Newark Beth Israel Medical Center placed the director of its heart transplant program on administrative leave Thursday while the hospital awaits the results of investigations into whether a vegetative patient was kept alive to boost the program’s survival statistics.
“As the most prudent course of action to ensure the complete independence of these internal and external assessments, we have placed the program’s director, Dr. Mark Zucker, on administrative leave pending the conclusion of our review,” Barry Ostrowsky, chief executive of the hospital’s affiliated network, RWJBarnabas Health, and Newark Beth Israel CEO Darrell Terry wrote in an email to employees Thursday night.
In the email, which was obtained by ProPublica, Ostrowsky and Terry also told employees that federal and state regulators were on site at Newark Beth Israel and that the staff was “cooperating fully.” The hospital and RWJBarnabas Health “take the recent allegations involving its heart transplant program extremely seriously,” they wrote.
