Low Budgets Compromise Patient Care at Florida Hospital

HCA Florida Bayonet Point surgeons met in December 2021 to discuss patient safety concerns that had been intensifying since the onset of budget costs, NBC News reports. More than a year later, doctors have grown even more worried. 

The hospital allegedly has unsanitary surgical instruments, inadequate monitoring of ICU patients, an overflowing emergency department and anesthesiology errors that resulted in patients waking up while in surgery. According to NBC News, four doctors who attended a meeting with hospital administration said that the hospital was a dangerous place to practice. However, little has been done to change conditions since the meeting first took place in 2021.  

The four doctors now allege that quality of care at the facility continues to drop since HCA first cut staff and began hiring contract workers in 2021, NBC News reports. In photos provided by the doctors, a new $85 million tower showed ceiling leaks in a recovery room, oxygen equipment held together with tape, bloody and backed-up sinks, wires dangling from a hole in the wall and cockroaches in the operating room.  

Complaint surveys filed by Florida’s Agency for Healthcare Administration echoed the growing concerns about the hospital. NBC News reports that in April 2021, AHCA determined that Bayonet Point “failed to enforce the emergency department policy and procedures to protect the health and safety of all patients in the hospital’s ED.” AHCA said that staffers who were supposed to watch electronic monitors for changes in patients’ vital signs were also being distracted by other tasks that involved them not looking at the monitors for lengths of time.  

Meanwhile, officials from AHCA reportedly warned the hospital that it may stop receiving Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements if it did not correct deficiencies, NBC News reports.  

Bayonet Point declined to comment on the allegations. 

Mackenna Moralez is the associate editor for the facilities market.