Thread by @charlesornstein

1/ Last summer I got a tip that there was something seriously wrong at Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center in Houston, one of the most famous heart transplant programs in the country. I quickly brought in @mike_hixenbaugh and our story ran today: propublica.org/article/baylor…

2/ One of our first contacts was Judy Kveton, whose husband died after a heart transplant in 2017. She thought the hospital was one of the best; then she got an anonymous letter that rocked her world.
propublica.org/article/baylor… (photo by @egconley)

3/ The letter said that doctors had raised concerns about the surgeon who operated on her husband but that administrators had not done enough to correct the problems despite “numerous complications, deaths, and poor outcomes.”

4/ This turned into a story about poor medical care, doctors whose concerns were ignored and misleading marketing material.

5/ I’ve worked on transplant stories before.

One story with @AlanZarembo led to the closure of the liver transplant program at @UCIrvineHealth: latimes.com/news/la-me-new…

6/ Another story with @tracyweber led to the closure of the kidney transplant program at @KPSanFrancisco: latimes.com/local/la-me-ka…

7/ Those stories, and today’s, share some common themes: Patients who were in the dark, misleading statements by officials, and hoping things would get better.

8/ St. Luke’s acknowledges its outcomes were bad in 2015 but says they have improved since then. They defend their program and their lead surgeon.

9/ But in January, @CMSgov threatened to pull the program’s funding because it was “out of compliance” with Medicare rules.

documentcloud.org/documents/4460…

10/ That same month, a patient’s transplant surgery went terribly wrong when a defibrillator failed to activate in the operating room and it took about 10 minutes to find another. The patient died two months later.

11/ And patients remain in the hospital far longer at St. Luke’s after a heart transplant than at other hospitals: a median of 27 days at St. Luke’s vs. 16 nationally. That could be a sign of slow recovery or possible complications. propublica.org/article/baylor…

12/ Some doctors at St. Luke’s were so concerned about the program’s direction that they started referring some of their patients to other hospitals. One doctor likened those conversations to “a mother saying somebody else is going to take better care of you than I can.”

13/ All the while, St. Luke's marketed itself in misleading ways. We found a video of the lead surgeon saying things that were false or misleading. A day after we asked about it, the hospital took it down.

14/ For example, the hospital touted the outcomes for its lung, kidney and liver transplant programs. But left out its heart outcomes, focusing on volume instead. Can you spot the difference? propublica.org/article/baylor…

15/ Check out our sidebar about a man who grew sicker as his wait for a transplant grew longer: propublica.org/article/baylor…

16/ And check out this amazing video from @katiecampbell in which you can watch our story playing it. Judy, with her voice cracking, reads a portion of the anonymous letter. It’s incredibly compelling.

17/ Help us tell the story of the Texas Medical Center. Are you a patient, doctor, administrator, vendor or visitor? We'd like to hear from you: propublica.org/getinvolved/he…

18/ Stay tuned. @Mike_Hixenbaugh and I have more stories in this series coming soon. Thanks for following this. /end