Orange hospital under investigation for operating room error

St. Joseph Hospital in Orange is under state investigation for mistakenly doing knee-repair surgery on a patient's good knee, the third "wrong-site" procedure to occur at Orange County's largest hospital since January 2006.

The Feb. 15 operation was intended to repair a patient's left knee but was "inadvertently performed on the right knee," according to a statement released by the hospital in response to questions from The Times. Citing privacy concerns, the hospital declined to identify the patient or release other details.

The other incidents involved an incision made on the wrong side of a patient's head, which occurred in January 2006 and was "promptly corrected," and an ear tube inserted in the wrong ear last June, according to Sonoma Van Brunt, the hospital's vice president for marketing, public affairs and business. There were no further complications from the errors, she said.

"No patient should ever have to go through an experience like this," Dr. Raymond Casciari, St. Joseph's chief medical officer, said in an e-mailed statement. "There is no room for error when it comes to patient care. One case is one too many."

The California Department of Public Health investigation marks the second time in recent months that a well-known Southern California hospital has come under public scrutiny for medical mistakes. State investigators found that three children, including the twin children of actor Dennis Quaid, received 1,000 times the intended dose of the blood thinner heparin in November while being treated at Cedars-Sinai, one of the nation's most prestigious hospitals.

"I've got to believe that St. Joseph's is beside itself trying to figure out what's not working," said Jim Lott, executive vice president of the Hospital Assn. of Southern California.

The investigations of Cedars-Sinai and St. Joseph underscore the difficulty hospitals have had preventing medical mistakes almost a decade after the Institute of Medicine shocked the nation by reporting that an estimated 100,000 people died each year in the U.S. from hospital errors. Later studies would call the 1999 estimate -- about the same as the yearly tally from motor vehicle accidents, breast cancer and AIDS combined -- too low.

"That report was kind of the epiphany moment," said Dr. Peter Angood, vice president and chief patient safety officer for the Joint Commission, a national organization that accredits hospitals. "But we have not achieved truly significant improvements in patient safety or the prevention of these adverse events."