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UNC health care refutes some details of a New York Times investigation that raises concerns about the quality of care received by some children with serious heart problems at the children's hospital A C.
The Times article describes the concerns of cardiologists who expressed their concerns to their division chief. Secret recordings of alleged conversations with supervisors, which were provided to the Times, reveal that the chief of pediatric cardiology told the doctors, "It's a nightmare right now. We are in crisis and everyone is aware of it.
A series of meetings would have been held in 2016 and 2017 after patients "suffering from complex diseases would die at a higher than expected death rate in recent years," some doctors suspected.
Part of the concern was that UNC Health Care executives did not share mortality data internally or with external agencies, unlike other hospitals. According to the report, some cardiologists had decided to start referring patients to other hospitals.
The data finally published in the Times showed that over the four-year period ending June 2017, UNC "had a higher death rate than almost all of the country's 82 institutions that publish public reports."
The newspaper then highlighted, through additional recordings, its concerns about the department's culture.
The article cites UNC as an example of concern about the "quality and consistency of care provided by dozens of pediatric cardiac surgery programs across the country." Some of these concerns may come from competing hospitals for children located nearby – this implies that surgeons can perform enough surgeries to gain experience in complex surgeries.
The Times article reports that the UNC hired a new chief surgeon in June 2018 and that the death rate has improved since the change.
UNC Health Care released a statement on Thursday saying the program has improved with the changes made in recent years to address some of the "crop problems" identified and appropriately addressed.
"We are proud of our pediatric congenital cardiac surgery program and our current team is getting the best results that would put us among the best in the country. We have been engaged in continuous quality improvement efforts for decades and have made significant improvements over the past 10 years. "
The health system also pointed to the complexity of many cases referred to the UNC pediatric congenital heart surgery program.
"To say that today's program is anything but powerful would not only be misleading, but not factual. To say that we ignored the problems would also be wrong.
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