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When Rosie Powell went to St. Rose Dominican Hospitals: Siena Campus in 2008 to have a colostomy bag removed, surgeons mistook her healthy right kidney for a tumor and removed it.
Sunday, June 27, 2010 | 2 a.m.
Do No Harm: Hospital Care in Las Vegas
- Prologue: A breakthrough in transparency
- Reporting is the first of its kind in Nevada
- Health care can hurt you
- Accident took her life, his heart
- Fall proves fatal for elderly patient
- Inadequate care, unspeakable pain
- Scarred for life by mistake in surgery
- Where I Stand: Fascination and frustration in reporting on Las Vegas hospital care
- Editorial: Preventing harm
- Health care leaders discuss Sun report’s findings
- St. Rose Dominican Hospitals to post data on quality
- State presses hospitals for full accounting of preventable injuries
See the results
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Surgeon Lyn Knoblock couldn’t identify what appeared to be a tumor in Rosie Powell’s abdomen.
She consulted her colleague Dr. Gregg Ripplinger, according to court records, and the surgeons decided to remove the mass, which they believed to be cancer. Knoblock sent the mass to the pathology lab for identification.
It was a healthy right kidney.
Powell has been disabled and consumed with worry since that day, April 4, 2008. She’s 76 and suffers from diabetes, a disease that is hard on kidneys.
Powell had been optimistic when she entered St. Rose Dominican Hospitals — Siena Campus. Knoblock was supposed to remove a colostomy bag, and Powell was looking forward to the freedom. As she was recovering, Knoblock gave her the news.
“I’m sorry, I thought it might be a tumor,” Powell says the doctor told her.
Powell says the surgeon told her she could survive with one kidney. Powell was incredulous.
“It’s better two than one,” she replied.
Powell’s medical records indicate that she had been born with an oddly placed right kidney, but it was healthy, the lawsuit alleges. She never received a better explanation of the mistake.
Knoblock and Ripplinger and their attorneys did not return calls for this story. Officials from St. Rose, which is owned by California-based Catholic Healthcare West, said in a statement that they care about patient safety and investigate “potential adverse events” and take action when necessary to address concerns.
In a court filing, Knoblock’s attorney said the doctors’ action “at most, rises to the level of negligence.”
Accidentally removing a patient’s kidney would qualify under Nevada law as a sentinel event — an incident in which a patient was harmed at the hospital — and would require the hospital to file a corrective action plan and notify the patient. In its investigation of hospital quality in Las Vegas, the Sun has identified apparent underreporting of sentinel events in Nevada, which the state is investigating. It’s not known whether St. Rose reported the incident as a sentinel event because that information is confidential. But Powell said she never heard from the hospital about the mistake.
The kidney removal wasn’t the only problem encountered by Powell. After the surgery, she complained of severe pain and an inability to eat, the lawsuit said. A CT scan revealed a hole between sutures at the site of the colostomy takedown. Knoblock did not note the injury in her postoperative report, the lawsuit alleges.
Powell underwent three more procedures to repair the leak and because of the complications, she has an ileostomy bag on her right side to collect waste, the lawsuit said.
Powell spent nearly a month in medical facilities because of the complications. The ileostomy bag is still her companion. She’s too traumatized to go to any doctor to have the bag removed.
Powell lives alone in Henderson on a meager income. Taking walks was her simple pleasure before the surgeries, but because of the ileostomy bag she seldom leaves home.
She said she feels depressed, angry and helpless.
“The damage is already done,” Powell said. “I was a happy person. I walked every day for one hour. Not no more. I can’t do that anymore.”
Knoblock and Ripplinger still practice at St. Rose hospitals.
I am a Nurse and I worked in Surgery for 26 years.
This is a disgrace. I've never heard of anything like this before. I've heard of wrong side surgery but never this. The surgeon should lose his license.
OMG, a doctor can't identify a tumor and a kidney? This is very scary. What school did that doctor graduated? This hospital should do their homework when hiring this medical practitioners.
Too much government regulation, in Coal mines, on Wall Street, on oil rigs, and in hospitals, we should listen to Rush and the Republican Right Wing think tanks, like NPRI. I hope this women does not get anything, after all we have cap medical malpractice settlements. She should have to pay the doctors, if she has only one kidney she has a 50% less of a chance of coming down with kidney cancer. Why did God give us two kidneys? because it allows doctors to make a one mistake. Now back to the Glen Beck Show...
Journey:
Nothing negative shows up under Knoblock's license.
Comment removed by moderator. Off-topic. If this causes you grief, call me at work during business hours, 259-2310. Tom Gorman
Tom,
Your editorial decisions could never cause me grief. In fact, I am glad to see the Sun exercising more restraint on the comments. If you would like me to call you I will...otherwise you have my email information...or you could use the Sun Comments messaging system.
mrxroc8
Government is bad - private sector good.
A horrible nightmare come true.
the only thing surgeons in LV do well are breast implants...and golf....
Some of the veterinarians in Las Vegas far surpass some of the MDs..
I know mistakes are made in EVERY profession. Medical mistakes effects us more severely than any other profession.
I have had 3 surgeries at St Rose - Siena Campus and have no complaints......the Doctor needs to be investigated.
Hospitals don't employ physicians in Nevada (per state law) and I am sure they have policies and procedures to protect patients, when they are followed. So, I don't really get why the Sun didn't ask the hospitals what those policies are and why the focus of these individual patient harm stories is on the hospitals rather than the doctors that made the mistakes.
Thank you, LVS, need more of this to awaken the public to the fact that doctors have some problems in today's quality control of themselves and their delight in the use of medicine as a venting mechanism against humans in general and seniors in specific situations.
Two out of three ain't bad.
The medical board in Nevada is a waste of time. They don't provide any real information. Go to the county district court website and look up malpractice cases... here's a tip: search by surgeon name, and also search by surgeon name that includes MD at the end of it... you will get two different results!
The system is very broken in Nevada and patients have no rights. Heaven forbid if you have a procedure done at UMC as they are protected by a cap of $75k. See how far that gets you for follow up care!
And heaven forbid if you have an elective procedure that the surgeon screws up. You have no insurance, no rights, no attorneys will take your case because it will take YEARS to settle and the cap is $300k so it's not worth their time, and you are left with a lifetime of disability, disfigurement, expenses, emotional trauma, and no recourse. And how do you fund follow up care when you are tens of thousands in debt and can't borrow anymore money? It's devastating.
Why did this even have to go to a lawsuit? St. Rose Jackasses, ensure the woman is taken care of for the rest of her life and DO BETTER!!!!
Doctors are not God, this I understand, but these Doctors need to be held accountable for 'each type' of mistake made.This has left her to sit the rest of her life, let her sit then where she chooses, that is what she should 'get out of it'.This kind of mistake is scary ,should you ask me, As I said she should get enough money to live out her life in comfort, I did not say insanely rich (like the actors who make 22 Million Dollars a picture)
Wow that "doctor" needs to have her license revoked.
Well doctors nurses and laypeople alike are all human and prone to human error....its when they try to cover up this error and sweep it under the rug...so to speak....that is criminal, in my opinion........but I believe it is a tendency of human nature and human ego to try and cover up our mistakes.....like a knee jerk reflex.....we should all try and be on the same team, the same page,.including and not limited to the patient, the staff, the family, the hospital......Mistakes should be learned from to prevent more in the future.....what can we do to prevent a tragedy like this from ever happening again and why how did it happen to begin with....where did we all fall short...what could we have done differently and what will we do differently next time?.....Transparency, communication, sharing of knowledge and education, the patient has a right and responsibility to be a smart patient.........this has to be a major paradigm shift for everyone involved. We are all responsible for health care. Mind you everything should be done to assist or repair or compensate when damage is done.....then we all have to move forward, do better, assist in the prevention of mistakes, corruption, cover-ups, greed....this is a community effort.
puppyluv....you're telling me this is human error?These people are not qualified to be ANY WHERE near a operating room and clearly should have their licenses lifted.This scares me to no end. Sad to say though,so many people simply go along with the doctor and accept what he or she has to say.People NEED friends/family to be involved.No one should do this alone and certainly NEVER listen to only one doctor.Always get a 2nd even a 3rd opinion.
My husband & I lived in Las Vegas for 10 yrs. We had a hard time finding doctors who knew more about medicine than we did! We moved back to the midwest in 2001 because of the lack of good healthcare but in early 2001 I was hospitalized at Summerlin Hospital with chest pain. I was in the ER all night & my physician never showed up. I was told I had suffered a heart attack & moved to a room. I insisted I didn't feel like I'd had a heart attack, just more like severe indigestion, but they insisted. I asked where my doctor was & they said he had lost his privileges. Say what? Oh not to worry...that can happen if he's not up to date with his paperwork. I told my husband to go home & sleep because he'd been sitting by my side all night. Finally a doctor I had never seen came in to say they were going to run some more tests but they KNEW I'd had a severe heart attack. The reason I didn't feel like I had was because "women have different kinds of heart attacks.". OK if you say so. Next a nurse came in with a tray of food & told me to eat because that was the last food or drink I'd be getting. HUH?? Seems I was scheduled for surgery in the morning! HUH? All this time they hadn't even put an ID bracelet on my wrist & obviously the nurse was delivering someone elses' last meal. I grabbed the phone, called my husband & said "Come get me right now!!!!" Hospital officials told me I should have my physician write an order before I left. I told them I was leaving right then period! The next day I called the Mayo Clinic in Arizona. Took all my records with me when I went for a checkup & guess what? I HAD NEVER HAD A HEART ATTACK! We loved Las Vegas & we miss
living there everyday but the healthcare scared the heck out of us. We were used to Minnesota healthcare where the doctors knew which end was up.
How do we know if this really a mistake or (kidney is very precious commodities right now)there is not much kidney donor available anywhere. Do they have any gambling issues? maybe, maybe not.....I hope that someone investigate this side of the story.