Mental health crisis at the hospital’s door | Philly Health Insider
And a road trip along the Acela
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This week, we unpack how hospitals can become unsafe for mentally ill patients and give you an update on Philly’s behavioral health commissioner.
Later in this edition, we take a road trip along the Acela corridor counting NCI-designated comprehensive cancer centers (with a bit of trivia!).
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— Abraham Gutman and Aubrey Whelan, Inquirer health reporters, @abrahamgutman and @aubreywhelan.
One in three safety violations at Philly-area hospitals involve a patient experiencing mental illness, a pattern that emerged when our colleague Sarah Gantz started tracking Pennsylvania hospital citations since 2023.
Some of the most serious violations:
A HUP-Cedar Avenue patient died on the floor of a behavioral health unit.
A Taylor Hospital patient with schizophrenia left the hospital and was missing for six days.
Five Jefferson Einstein patients attempted to hurt themselves at the hospital after they were not properly screened for suicide risk in the emergency department.
The inspection reports point to inadequate staffing, lack of proper emergency protocols, and insufficient training as part of the problem.
More patients with behavioral health needs have been turning to Philly-area hospitals in recent years. And places like the emergency department — loud, bright, and lacking privacy — are “really the worst place for them to be,” Deborah Cunningham, the vice president of behavioral health at Main Line Health, told Sarah.
So what can hospitals do?
Main Line Health has doubled its number of inpatient behavioral health beds, and Crozer-Chester opened a new outpatient center.
A patient advocate wants hospitals to give their staff simulation training to help them understand what a patient in crisis is experiencing.
Check out Sarah’s story to get the details on efforts to prevent such safety violations from happening again.
The latest news to pay attention to
New Jersey is proposing a new rule to better protect patients from sexual misconduct by doctors. The rule would require physicians to inform patients of their right to have another medical professional present during sensitive exams, Wendy Ruderman explains.
New year, new CEO. Trinity Health Mid-Atlantic CEO James Woodward will retire in January after six years at the system’s helm, Harold Brubaker reports.
Chinese biotech manufacturers like WuXi AppTec have forged close relationships with American start-ups and universities, and have hired hundreds locally. But as Congress looks to crack down on China’s efforts to dominate in biotech, the companies’ Philly-area business partners are looking into alternatives to bring their ideas from the lab to the market.
You don’t usually find a half-acre farm next to a hospital helipad — like the Delema G. Deaver Wellness Farm on the Lankenau Medical Center campus. Aubrey took a reporting trip to the farm that supplies about 4,000 pounds of fresh produce a year to patients experiencing food insecurity.
This week’s number: 13.
That’s how many NCI-designated comprehensive cancer centers you will pass if you drive on I-95 from Boston to D.C. That includes three centers in Philly, which started last week with only two.
The National Cancer Institute awarded its highest designation to Jefferson’s Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center, which joins Penn’s Abramson Center and Temple’s Fox Chase Cancer Center with the “comprehensive” distinction. Philadelphia now has more than any other U.S. city except NYC, which has four.
Those 13 comprehensive cancer centers along the 400-mile stretch between Boston and D.C. add up to nearly a quarter of the nation’s 57 total centers. By comparison, Texas has three and California has eight.
If we zoom out a bit, the count climbs even more. We can add another comprehensive center in New Hampshire, two in Virginia, and one more in Pittsburgh. (Chill, yinzers, we got more. Go Birds!)
Fun fact: with the upgrade of Jeff’s center, Sidney Kimmel is the only person in America to have their name on two comprehensive cancer centers. Can you guess where the second one is? (Find the answer at the end of the newsletter.)
State inspectors visited Penn Presbyterian Medical Center one time between August and January and found no problems.
“When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras,” the old medical adage goes.
Recently, a patient with lower back pain forced internist Jeffrey Millstein to reconsider such heuristics. The patient was suffering from an incredibly common symptom — but her pain was actually caused by an uncommon condition: a mass encompassing her spine.
Millstein listened to her concerns, noticed her ongoing pain, and ordered an MRI that caught the growth.
“As clinicians, we must keep our antennae up,” the regional medical director for Penn Primary Care wrote in an expert opinion, sharing what he has learned about the lessons for physicians, and patients, from such encounters with uncommon problems.
Making moves
We told you a few weeks ago that Jill Bowen, Philadelphia’s behavioral health commissioner, stepped down for a gig in Vermont.
The city has announced her replacement, for now at least.
Marquita Williams will serve as the interim commissioner of Philadelphia’s Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual disAbility Services. Williams has been with DBHIDS and Community Behavioral Health for more than a decade, most recently as a senior executive adviser to Bowen.
A city spokesperson told us that there will be a national search for the permanent commissioner.
Bulletin board
There’s been concern in recent years that taking Tylenol during pregnancy increases the risk of autism, ADHD, or other intellectual disabilities for the child. This notion was even cited in lawsuits against drug manufacturers.
Is there a relationship between the pain reliever and autism? The answer is seems to be no, based on new research from Drexel University and Sweden’s Karolinska Institutet. (Home of the Nobel Prize in medicine!)
What’s cool about this new JAMA study is that it used a large Swedish database that had information about siblings, allowing to statistically control for aspects of both nature and nurture.
The researchers analyzed data from 2.5 million children born between 1995 and 2019 in Sweden. The researchers found that when comparing siblings, there was no association between the use of the drug and neurodevelopmental disorders.
That’s a wrap for us this week! We hope that the Sixers will still be in the playoffs by the next time we pop in your inbox. Speaking of — ortho folks, what’s it like for you to watch Joel Embiid play? Are you seeing signs of his recovery or injury that we are missing? Anxious viewers want to know.
(Oh and we didn’t forget to give you an answer to our trivia question about cancer centers: The second center that bears Sidney Kimmel’s name is the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore.)
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