A surgical center in Secaucus has been fined $76,500 by the state Department of Health for more than a dozen violations, including failures that put patients at “risk of serious harm.”
The Center For Modern Surgery on Meadowlands Parkway was cited for 14 violations, according to a 12-page penalty letter dated Feb. 29. The business has 30 days to appeal the Department of Health’s findings, which were the result of inspections in June and September last year.
The surgical center “put patients at an immediate risk of serious harm” when three physicians performed 13 surgeries that they were not approved to do “through credentialing, in accordance with the facility’s bylaws,” the letter said. Four of the 11 patients were transferred to area hospitals for stays of up to seven days after complications arose at the surgical center.
The penalty for the 13 violations totaled $32,500. Officials with the Center for Modern Surgery did not return a call for comment.
The facility’ services center around gynecological and urological procedures. Its website boasts that it has “safety protocols and procedures in place that make it a safer option than the hospital and is fully licensed and certified.”
Multiple violations involved allowing procedures to be performed by doctors whose certifications had expired or doctors who lacked clinical privileges. Others involved the failure to enter physicians’ orders into patients’ records.
The state also found that the company failed to identify an alternate administrator and an alternate director of nursing.
Among the perhaps most egregious violations was the failure to “ensure that adequate post-surgical assessments were conducted in five of 11 reviewed medical records.”
“There was no evidence a physician evaluated the patient in the Post Anesthesia Care Unit when a complication arose,” the letter said. “This subjected the patients to actual harm or an immediate and serious risk of harm.”
The surgical center was fined $12,500 for those violations.
The Center for Modern Surgery also did not have a policy or “written guidelines for emergencies or when to call 911.” Instead the staff would rely on notifying the doctor when an emergency arose, the letter said.
