Welcome to Philly Health Insider

Welcome to the first edition of the Philly Health Insider newsletter — an exclusive weekly look into Philadelphia’s health-care scene brought to you by us: Inquirer health reporters Aubrey Whelan and Abraham Gutman.

Each week, we’ll highlight exclusive reports on hospital inspections, news on hirings and firings, and data that sheds insight on the practice of medicine in our region, with the inside story from our team of health reporters here at The Inquirer.

Our top story this week is an investigative report holding Philly-area hospitals accountable for a rare but potentially devastating medical error — items used in surgery getting left inside patients.

Let’s get to it.

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— Aubrey Whelan and Abraham Gutman, Inquirer health reporters, @aubreyjwhelan and @abgutman.

Today, we’re bringing you a harrowing report illuminating the stories of patients who experienced a medical error so serious it’s called a “never event” — an object was left behind in their body after surgery.

Our colleagues conducted an original data analysis of years of medical billing records for every hospital patient in our area. More than 200 patients in the Philadelphia area had objects left behind in their bodies after surgery — some with devastating health consequences — in the six years between 2017 and 2022.

A former pro motocross rider in New Jersey learned that his airway was being squeezed shut by gauze strips, totaling six to eight feet in length, left in his chest during a routine biopsy at Jefferson Washington Township Hospital two years before.

A Pottstown woman contracted a “raging infection” from a sponge left inside her abdomen during an emergency C-section at Chester County Hospital, which is owned by Penn Medicine. The mistake eventually required the removal of parts of her colon and appendix.

Read our report to learn how often this happens — and at which hospitals. You’ll learn about the regulatory gaps that make it much harder to track serious medical errors — and how state inspectors did not reprimand any of the hospitals where this happened.

Some area hospitals say they’re increasing transparency around these errors. For example, Temple University Hospital treated the New Jersey patient who had gauze left inside him, and declined to say whether it alerted Jefferson Washington Township hospital, where the patient says the error occurred, about the discovery.

But Temple’s chief medical officer, Carl Sirio, told The Inquirer that going forward the system will report such errors to the hospital that made them. “It’s not standard practice, but as a moral obligation to make the system better, we owe that courtesy call,” said Sirio, an internist and critical care doctor.

Keep reading for the full investigation by Wendy Ruderman, Sarah Gantz, and Dylan Purcell.

The big number: $3 million.

That’s how much pharma and medical device companies paid more than 1,250 Philly-area physicians to travel the country and globe in 2022.

About $420,000 went toward international travel. Globe-trotting docs visited São Paulo in Brazil, Paris in France, and Sydney in Australia.

Popular domestic travel destinations were Chicago, Dallas, Miami, and Fort Worth.

But the city that docs traveled to the most on industry dime was... the City of Brotherly Love and Sisterly Affection!

That’s right, the greatest number of physicians traveled in and around Philadelphia. (Still, the total billed was only $140,000.)

Never mind that the more than 230 docs taking industry payments for travel to Philadelphia included over 100 who work in the city.

Hey, we get it. Where else can you find mouthwatering cheesesteaks, Nobel Prize winning scientists, and Bryce Harper?

(Pssst, docs and APPs, did you know that you can look yourself up in the Open Payment system and report anything that might be wrong? If you find anything interesting, let us know!)

Our colleague Sarah Gantz is tracking inspection reports from the Pennsylvania Department of Health. Each week, we will share her findings of violations at a local hospital for a six-month period.

This week: the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Penn Medicine’s flagship hospital, for the second half of 2023.

HUP received the state’s most serious warning — “immediate jeopardy” — for a November incident at its satellite facility on Cedar Avenue (at the location of the former Mercy Hospital) in which staff did not respond quickly enough to a patient in distress who later died.

Later that month, HUP-Cedar was cited again: This time for “unacceptable delay” in care of a patient who waited four days for doctors to splint their broken wrist.

You can read more about HUP’s inspection reports in Sarah’s story.

How can the mRNA delivery system used in the COVID vaccines be used to treat other diseases? That’s what Michael J. Mitchell and his colleagues at Penn are studying.

Mitchell, an associate professor of bioengineering, is an expert in lipid nanoparticles — fatty molecules that deliver messenger RNA treatments into cells. In the COVID vaccines, for example, lipid nanoparticles carried mRNA into white blood cells in the arm. Now, Mitchell and his colleagues are researching new ways to use this delivery system: “How do we get into the brain? How do we get into the lungs for cystic fibrosis and lung cancer?”

In a Q&A with our colleague Tom, Mitchell talks about how mRNA technology goes beyond COVID vaccines, and why lipid nanoparticles are like onions and space shuttles. (Really.)

(A side note: Tom retired last week after more than two decades at The Inquirer. We will miss him as a colleague and a friend, but, more than anything, as a journalist able to masterfully tell complex and important stories like those featured in this newsletter.)

Jill Bowen, Philadelphia’s behavioral health commissioner, is heading to Vermont.

The clinical psychologist led the Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual disAbility Services for more than three years. Her last day will be April 15.

She will join the administration of Vermont’s Republican Gov. Phil Scott as commissioner of the Department of Disabilities, Aging and Independent Living. (Leading departments with long names seems to be her specialty!)

Any guesses who will replace her at DBHIDS? And have you heard anything about the search for Philly’s next health commissioner?

Got an exciting promotion or new gig? Let us know!

Aspiring nursing students at Lincoln University who were caught off guard when the university shut down its nursing program last year.

Until last spring, Lincoln was the only HBCU in Pennsylvania that trained nurses. But the program shut down last spring after its grads struggled to pass the licensure exams for RNs. Now Lincoln students have a new option: complete a program that’s like doing a premed track at the four-year college, then advance after graduation to the Community College of Philadelphia to finish training as a RN with just four nursing classes.

Check out more on the partnership, and learn what makes CCP and Lincoln “kissing cousins.”

Patients lost in the quagmire known as hospital cost transparency.

Only one in five Pennsylvania hospitals are fully complying with a three-year old federal price transparency rule. And many Philadelphia-area hospitals post a spreadsheet of prices with incomplete information.

You can read more about the report from the advocacy group Patient Rights Advocate.

Philadelphia’s opioid overdose crisis is drawing intense focus from Philly’s new mayor, Cherelle L. Parker, and members of its city council.

Parker will no longer allow city dollars to be spent on syringe exchange services, a major departure from her predecessors. She’s pledged $100 million to fund “triage centers” for people in addiction — but has not yet provided details on where they’ll open or what they will do.

If you work with people in addiction, we’re interested in your thoughts on the new administration’s approach to harm reduction and the opioid crisis, and what you’re hearing about the Parker administration’s next health moves. Send us a tip here.

If you’d like to browse more of our team’s stories, check out this link that we keep up to date.

That’s all from us this week! We’ll be back next Wednesday. — Aubrey and Abraham