Franklin Sq Hospital Pediatrics Unit Shut Down

Anna Reed April 25 at 2:41pm · I have tried to send to news agencies but haven’t gotten a robust response. I know some of you have already read this. Please share in attempt to make viral, especially those of you in Maryland.

I am writing this in hopes that we can shed much needed light on this story that has gravely affected the community around MedStar Franklin Square Medical Center outside of Baltimore, but more importantly is a symptom of a national issue that is largely responsible for our broken health care system – for-profit medicine.

The area affected includes a Maryland “hot spot” where rates of drug use, teen pregnancy, domestic violence, and child abuse are the highest in Maryland. This is a place that is frequently forgotten since it does not belong to Baltimore City, but the county, and people are poor and have no voice. This community built this hospital and had no say in the dissolution of this vital resource.

Tuesday, April 3rd, 2018, after decades of service to the community, the Department of Pediatrics here at Franklin was notified that Friday, April 6th at 7 pm the department would be permanently closed. Our department chair, Dr. Scott Krugman, a physician held in high esteem by pediatricians around the country, who had devoted over twenty years of his career to this hospital and community, was terminated immediately, that day, as was Dr. Adrienne Suggs, who was instrumental in building the pediatric ER over the last fourteen years. Over thirty staff lost jobs in addition to eight pediatricians. I am one of those pediatricians. However, I was going to be leaving at the end of June to pursue a 3 year training program at Johns Hopkins for pediatric gastroenterology. I can not enjoy my extended, paid vacation, however, due to the consequences of this event and its effect on me.

The fallout from this has been nothing short of a public safety disaster.

The MSFSMC adult ER providers have been asked to assume the role of experienced emergency pediatric providers without the experience to do so (since they were working side by side with a pediatric ER). Friday morning, April 6th, they were learning PALS – Pediatric Advanced Life Support, normally, a two day class. The adult ER nurses and medical technicians are untrained, unprepared, and terrified. Many haven’t seen a pediatric patient in over a decade and yet now the life of the blue newborn that is brought in by ambulance rests in their hands. In 2017, the MSFSMC Pediatric ER saw 17,000 patients and few of these patients were seen by adult providers. The implications for the children and their families of this reckless decision go without saying. In fact, there have already been numerous grave errors made, and will continue to be made, as long as there aren’t experienced pediatricians in that ER.

Emergency medical services were told the departments are “merging” so they continued to bring children in need of emergency care to MSFSMC ER expecting pediatric specialists.

Parents expected their children would be seen by pediatricians, or at least physicians with experience seeing children.

Patients in need of observation or admission – over 800 combined in 2017 – will now have to be transferred to other hospitals. Many need a prior authorization as Franklin Square was the last Medstar hospital for inpatient pediatrics outside of Georgetown– something extremely time consuming to do and especially intrusive on patient care for a busy ER provider.

The Child Protection Services Team is dissolved. The team was started by Dr. Krugman in 2000 and for almost two decades MSFSMC has been the Baltimore County Center for Child Sexual Abuse evaluations. Additionally, the team cared for 300 total abused children each year with 24/7 social work and physician coverage. This was the only program in the state of Maryland with these services, funded by $82,000 grant funds. Firing Dr. Krugman ended the program, and all social workers and covering doctors were terminated as well. No coordination occurred with other hospitals, so the hospitals were calling Dr. Krugman and asking what to do. It is highly likely that kids who are physically abused are going to be missed or not reported because of not having a system or pediatricians and sexual abuse kids will have to travel far for evaluation.

Medical imaging for pediatric patients who need sedation – gone.

Post-operative pediatric care for orthopedics, general surgery, and ENT, on a dedicated pediatric unit by a dedicated pediatric team – gone.

Access to pediatric specialists – gastroenterology, neurology, endocrinology at the Pediatric Practice– eliminated.

Pediatric rotation and pediatric faculty didactics by pediatricians for the Family Medicine Residency program – gone.

Dedicated pediatrics for the Georgetown medical students for whom we have been responsible – gone.

The decision of this administration was caulous and irresponsible with complete disregard for the lives of infants and children, those who love and care for them, and those who have devoted their careers to taking care of people.

Where is the responsibility to the community who has funded the construction of parts of this community hospital? Who will be held accountable when these children don’t get the care they need?

This event has highlighted the national issues of inequitable access to healthcare, compromises to quality of care to save a buck, and contributions to physician burn out as a result of the for-profit mentally of this corporation, and corporations like it – and it is only one event in a pattern of many.

The fact is, the salary and bonus of the president of the hospital could have funded the 6 ER physicians that were let go. No one talks about the millions of dollars in healthcare we spend on administrator salaries and the fact that we have too many administrators or that they do not understand the complexities of the medical system and make decisions purely driven by profit. No one in medicine should earn those obscene amounts of money, certainly not at the cost of peoples’ lives. I am tired of sitting on the side lines as we deny care to our most vulnerable and needy and believe MedStar, corporations like it, insurance companies and whoever else is implicated needs to be held accountable. The public deserves to know what is happening and as physicians, we need to facilitate this.

Medstar Franklin Square’s Mission : “MedStar Franklin Square Medical Center, a member of MedStar Health, provides safe, high quality care, excellent service, and education to improve the health of our MedStar Franklin Square medical Center community.”

They have failed their mission on every account.

Physicians need to speak up. All of our children deserve the best care. We need to take back medicine