Sheila Leslie

Sun, Mar 23, 2008 (2 a.m.)

Reno — These past few weeks Nevada residents have experienced an enormous crisis of confidence in the safety and quality of our health care system.

Risky medical practices exposed tens of thousands of Nevadans to the horror of life-threatening infectious diseases, including hepatitis C, hepatitis B and HIV. At least six people have contracted hepatitis C in Southern Nevada, linked only by a visit to an endoscopy center later found to have completely disregarded basic patient safety in a quest for faster, cheaper, assembly-line medicine.

Each day seems to bring more bad news as statewide inspections of ambulatory surgical centers uncover additional evidence of unsanitary, unsafe practices.

Some ambulatory surgical centers have not been inspected in as long as 15 years, yet more than a dozen state health inspector positions remain unfilled. Nevadans are questioning the commitment of their state government to provide adequate oversight of these facilities and ensure the public’s health is protected.

Nevada can, and must, do better. Our citizens expect and deserve a health care system that is safe, with medical professionals who follow safety standards and do no harm to their patients.

In the next few weeks the Legislative Committee on Health Care will hold a series of forums to formulate an aggressive action plan that ensures a crisis of this magnitude never happens again. At 5:30 p.m. Monday the committee will hold a hearing at the Grant Sawyer State Building in Las Vegas solely to hear public comment on this issue. It is important to have a public dialogue.

The committee will take this input, as well as the best thinking of national and state public health experts, to another hearing on April 21, when we will develop a comprehensive approach to resolving this crisis.

We’ll start by talking about oversight, including more comprehensive inspections of the surgical centers and doctors’ offices that perform these procedures. We also need to develop an aggressive recruitment and retention plan to ensure we have sufficient and qualified health inspectors.

We know that inspections can save lives and serve as an important deterrent to reckless behavior. We cannot afford to throw up our hands and say “nothing more can be done” simply because we cannot look over every doctor’s shoulder.

It’s also important to examine current state law to determine whether changes are needed so the state can immediately intervene when inspectors discover major safety infractions.

Finally, we will ask what powers should licensing boards have to investigate complaints and discipline offenders? Perhaps we should implement ongoing professional training in sanitary medical procedures, as well as in ethics, so that doctors and nurses are encouraged to report dangerous practices before infection is spread.

I hope this public review of the system will help Nevadans feel safe to undergo preventive cancer screenings. We must reassure all Nevadans that these tests can ultimately save lives.

Most of all, we must prove to Nevadans that the state can and will do everything possible to make sure public health is not jeopardized by a lack of attention and resources.

Sheila Leslie, a Democratic assemblywoman from Reno, is chairwoman of the Nevada Legislative Committee on Health Care.