Wrong Patient! Surgeon Removes Kidney

A surgeon at Saint Vincent Hospital in Worcester, Massachusetts, removed a kidney from the wrong patient because he had the same name as another patient with a kidney tumor.

The Department of Public Health in partnership with Medicare inspected the hospital in August and found serious safety concerns including the accidental kidney removal, which had occurred in July, according to The Boston Globe. The hospital faces termination from the Medicare program on Dec. 12 if improvements are not put into place, a letter written in September to hospital chief executive stated.

The surgeon viewed a CT scan before the surgery, which showed a large tumor on the left kidney. The scan was actually for another patient with the same name, however, and the mistake wasn’t caught until after the surgery.

Protocols state that a second identifier, such as birth date, be used to prevent situations where two patients might have the same name. In this instance, the patients were several years apart in age and would have been well distinguished by birth date.

A spokesman from Tenet Health, which owns Saint Vincent, made it clear that the mistake did not involve any employees from the hospital but was caused by the surgeon who was not employed by the hospital. “This is a deeply unfortunate situation involving a patient misidentification that took place outside our hospital and did not involve our employees,” CNN reported.

It is unclear exactly where or how the mistake occurred. After the surgery, the mistake was discovered when the removed kidney was tested and no tumor was present. The identities of the patients were not released due to patient privacy laws. The hospital is now taking additional steps to verify the identity of their patients, the New York Daily News reported.

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