Editorial: Excessive secrecy at St. Christopher's Hospital for Children

There is no acceptable reason for St. Christopher's Hospital for Children to withhold vital clinical data that could help parents decide whether their newborn baby should have open-heart surgery there. No aspect of the risks inherent in such delicate procedures should be kept under lock and key.

The North Philadelphia hospital refused to participate in a voluntary survey of infant heart surgery mortality rates conducted by the Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council. It was the only one of five Pennsylvania hospitals performing the surgeries that wouldn't participate in the state's first-ever evaluation of such programs.

The survey relied on data collected from nurses, physicians, and other caregivers. Lacking that data from St. Christopher's, Inquirer reporters Tom Avril and Dylan Purcell analyzed related information from insurance claim details reported to the Health Care Cost Containment Council. Their analysis revealed that 24 percent of the 121 newborns who had heart surgery at St. Christopher's between 2009 and 2014 died. That was nearly triple the 8.5 percent mortality rate at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, which performed 784 such surgeries during the same period.

St. Christopher's mortality rate in itself is not an indictment of the hospital. After all, heart surgeries on newborns are very delicate operations to correct complex congenital defects, including malformed chambers. Not long ago, such problems in tiny babies were considered inoperable, and most patients died. It is still extremely high-risk surgery, which is why parents considering an operation for their child must know everything about the hospital and surgeons.

Asked to respond to the Inquirer analysis, St. Christopher's instead released its data on heart operations performed on children of all ages, including those who underwent procedures less complicated than an operation on a newborn. For infants from 1 month to 1 year old, the mortality rate for both St. Christopher's and CHOP was just under 3 percent. For children ages 1 to 17, both hospitals' rates were less than 1 percent.

St. Christopher's recently stopped performing elective newborn heart surgeries pending an internal review. That doesn't mean the 140-year-old hospital's past sequestering of surgical mortality rates is no longer relevant. Such secrecy should raise the antennae of today's medical consumers, who have been urged to ask probing questions before assenting to any medication or procedure.

St. Christopher's, however, isn't the only hospital that needs a new attitude. Of the 125 U.S. hospitals performing pediatric heart surgeries, only 33 share their mortality rates. That's not good enough. Especially when a baby's life is at stake, hospitals can't keep secrets.