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Hospitals Fined For Leaving Surgical Equipment Inside Patients
Photo by Valeriy Velikov/Shutterstock
You know how when you go in for an operation and the doctors leave some of their equipment inside you? Oh, wait--that's not how it's supposed to happen, is it? Except, well, at two local hospital it has happened, and now those two facilities have been slapped with fines.
For one hospital, Keck Hospital of USC, it was the third time such a thing has happened.
Keck has been fined $75,000, while the Motion Picture & Television Hospital in Woodland Hills has been fined $50,000. The penalties were ordered by the California Department of Public Health, according to City News Service.
Both surgeries took place in 2010. At MPTH, a patient underwent a knee operation, and ended up with a surgical sponge left inside them. At Keck, the patient had to have a second operation to remove a small "electrocautery tip" left inside during the initial surgery.
Other fines in similar cases were levied today statewide, affecting a total of 13 hospitals.
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