By Jim Kasuba
The News-Herald
Twitter: @JKasuba

WYANDOTTE — Henry Ford Wyandotte Hospital now is in compliance with Medicare regulations, but the incident that spurred a notice of noncompliance is a bit more complicated than the spilling of hot coffee on a patient.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services published a legal notice in the April 13 editions of The News-Herald Newspapers to alert the public that the hospital could lose its right to bill for Medicare services after an elderly patient was burned with coffee served at the hospital.

The legal notice said the agreement with the hospital, 2333 Biddle Ave., and the secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services as a hospital in the Medicare program would be terminated.

The CMS said the hospital was not in compliance with the patients’ rights portion of the Medicare condition of participation for a hospital and that the Medicare program would not make payment for inpatient hospital services for patients admitted on or after April 28.

That notice alarmed many area residents who could be affected by such an action against the hospital.

Denise Brooks-Williams, hospital president and CEO, said that in the days after the notice was published, the hospital received a number of phone calls and email posts from people expressing concern over the prospect that the hospital could be terminated from the Medicare program.

She said administrators dealt with those concerns on a person-to-person basis, explaining that the hospital continued to be part of the program and was in the process of rectifying the situation.

Brooks-Williams announced Wednesday that the hospital team immediately took all appropriate steps to correct the issue and the hospital remains in good standing with CMS.

She said two people from CMS visited the hospital Monday after the agency received a corrective action report from the hospital a week earlier.

“I would like to thank all of our staff and physicians for their dedication and commitment in providing the best in patient safety and quality care,” Brooks-Williams said in a press release. “And we thank our patients and the Downriver community for continuing to trust us with their health care. Continued...

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“We have been serving the health care needs of the Downriver community for more than 85 years — we remain committed and ready to serve you.”

Initially, a hospital representative said the noncompliance issue was over the temperature of a beverage, but the situation evolved into a communication problem.

“Regulations fall into a lot of categories,” Brooks-Williams told The News-Herald. “This incident was more than just the beverage spilling.”

Due to patient confidentiality laws, Brooks-Williams said she did not want to be so specific as to identify the family that filed the complaint, but called it “an unfortunate situation with multiple family members visiting this individual.”

One person who held durable power of attorney for the patient in question felt that hospital communication with that individual over the coffee-spilling incident was not as timely as it should have been.

Brooks-Williams clarified that family members of the patient were notified in what the hospital believed was a timely manner, including the person with durable power of attorney, but it became apparent after the incident that the hospital needed to update its communication policy as it pertains to who the hospital deals with concerning updates on the health of individual patients.

“In the future, we have a clear process for dealing with communication,” Brooks-Williams said. “We provided documentation that going forward we will not have this problem in the future.”

The important thing for patients and everyone who deals with the hospital to know, Brooks-Williams said, is that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services report has informed the hospital that it is now in compliance with the conditions of participation and that there are no lingering issues with the Medicare program at the hospital.

Contact Jim Kasuba at 1-734-246-0881 or jimk@heritage.com. Follow him on Facebook and @JKasuba on Twitter.

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