Weak Oversight Lets Bad Hospitals Stay Open

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SYRACUSE — In March 2004, Sharon Yacketta walked into University Hospital here for an operation to help control her incontinence.

But her doctor, Robert S. Lai, botched the procedure, causing urine to leak into her abdomen. A month later, Dr. Lai and a second surgeon perforated her colon during a follow-up operation at University. Four years and 20 operations later, Ms. Yacketta has lost most of her colon and is still incontinent.

“They messed my life up,” Ms. Yacketta said of her surgeons. “I hope those doctors rot.”

Dr. Lai, who has left University and now practices outside Chicago, acknowledged that he and his surgical team had accidentally injured Ms. Yacketta but said he had not been negligent.

Mistakes happen even at good hospitals, of course. But evidence shows that University, which is owned by the State University of New York system, is not a good hospital. In fact, in late 2006 a state commission recommended that it be scaled back and merged with another hospital.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/08/business/08hospital.h...