The 17 patients who died in the Intensive Care Unit of the St. Pantelimon Hospital in Bucharest were treated correctly, and the accusations of the care director, who points the finger at the doctors, are false.
17 ATI patients died under suspicious conditions. Photo source: archive
The whole story is set against the backdrop of an older conflict, of harassment and internal wrangling between medical staff. That's all. These are the conclusions of the report drawn up by the Control Body of the Ministry of Health. Experts talk about the “black swan” concept.
Rough handling. Diversion of attention. A story to put children to sleep. Really funny, if it weren't for the fact that 17 patients died on the conveyor belt in just four days. This is how it could be described, according to Cezar Irimia, the president of the Federation of Associations of Cancer Patients, the report of the Control Body of the Ministry of Health sent to check the situation on the ground.
The story in brief: 17 patients admitted to ATI die inexplicably, one after another, within a few days. The reason? One of the vital drugs was allegedly administered in smaller amounts than it should have been. The situation is reported by a nurse who contacts the director of medical care, who is on leave. In turn, she informs the hospital management who calls the police. They are the perfect ingredients of a revenge scandal, an internal conflict that exploded into the public space and became national news overnight, say voices from the Ministry of Health. In the meantime, the authorities are mobilizing in an exemplary manner and simultaneously starting four investigations: one criminal, opened by the Prosecutor's Office, one on which specialists from the ministry work, one opened by the College of Doctors and the last – internal, which is carried out within the hospital.
On Wednesday, April 17, the report drawn up by the Ministry's Control Body comes with a first verdict: the accusations are false! “Complaints made by hospital employees are based on faulty communication between the management of the unit and the persons concerned. The reports concerned interference in the control activity of the director of care and alleged acts of harassment exerted on a doctor from the ATI department”it is stated in the press release sent by the ministry.
“No one wants to wrinkle their image”
We are in an election year, says Cezar Irimia. No one wants to get their hands dirty, wrinkle their image. That's why no one is taking responsibility for the tragedy at St. Pantelimon. So they throw the problem in the hospital yard. “And this is how they washed their hands! Are they not ashamed to cover up the death of 17 people?“, asks the president of the Federation of Associations of Cancer Patients, outraged. “In a report in which you should have come up with the conclusions about these deaths, you come and talk about a story of harassment, a sleazy love and a love affair? It's the night of the mind.”
The death of those people is covered up by the system, accuses Cezar Irimia. “We live in a country where ministerial responsibility does not exist. Anyone can be a minister in Romania without having the slightest responsibility”. He believes that the assumption of this tragedy by the Ministry of Health would be nothing more than a big stain on the face of a minister devoured by political ambitions. “People are dying on their heads and the minister is in office, thank you.”
It is known that in the medical world pride is very high, as is the desire for affirmation, the fight for certain positions is also fierce. This is where most misunderstandings and frustrations arise. Not to mention the fact that the system itself is underfunded, salaries are often unfair, and as we well know, the money – which is not there and will not come – adds even more fuel to the fire. But, Cezar Irimia likes to point out, the waters get even more agitated when politics gets involved. “The meddling of the political class in the health system led to such results. Because the khabarnists occupy management positions, the professionals work until exhaustion and it is normal that they are frustrated that they are ordered by a nobody, who came politically colored. A poster leech that tells him how to do the operation: on the left or on the right”, declares the president of the Federation of Associations of Cancer Patients. “We agree that in a democracy the position of minister is political, but still, let the professionals do their job if you don't know how.”
Cezar Irimia is of the opinion that the director of medical care at St. Spiridon hospital is not lying, and the accusations are not false. “There's no way you can come up with such a made-up story, which you can't prove, because these things can be easily verified, and basically you're just jeopardizing not only your position and your job, but also your freedom.”
The Peacock Mite, the scapegoat of this macabre story, is once again the medical worker, and not the system. “I have never seen a report that talks about underfunding, that says that there are no coherent health policies, that nothing is working properly. Always the scapegoat was the nurse/doctor/nurse…the gatekeeper“, says Irimia.
The exception that proves the rule
17 deaths in four days. Are we really talking about an inordinately large number in an extremely short time? Or is it just a situation that intensive care units often face, as the doctors of St. Pantelimon Hospital claim? This question was answered by Dr. Carmen Pantiș, ATI primary physician at the Oradea Emergency Hospital. “Mortality in an Intensive Care Unit is very high. It is not impossible for 17 patients to die in 4 days. Sometimes they come so seriously ill that the chances are slim. They often come to the ER almost dead. In the last moment. Then there are situations when relatives of a patient suffering from terminal cancer bring him to the hospital in his last days or hours of life. In an attempt to save him“, the doctor explained to us. And one more aspect: everything depends on the disease the patient is suffering from, on the stage in which the respective condition is, on the existing comorbidities, on the age of the person, on the way the body responds to the treatment. “There are many elements that may or may not lead to death.”
The probability that such a large number of deaths will occur in such a short time also appears in the statistics, Marian Staș, an expert in education, a man of numbers, with studies in mathematics and computer science, declared for “Adevărul” . “It isthere is what is called, in statistical, mathematical terms, the concept of outlier. We are talking about extremely rare phenomena, very improbable, but which can happen beyond any conspiracy theory. From a statistical point of view, based on the presumption of good faith of the medical staff, there is also the possibility of such rare things happening. It is something that jumps out of the rules of the game, an anomaly. The concept of “black swan”. Extremely rare, but if you say you don't know black swans exist, that doesn't mean all swans are white“, explains the specialist.
The health system, a cancer with metastases
Cezar Irimia also mentions the underfunding of the health system, which seems to be taking its last moments. “It is, after all, natural to die within days when hospitals, many of them, do not have vital, essential drugs and no money to buy them“, he also specified, referring to the cases where doctors have to share a certain medicine to several patients in such a way that the quantity reaches everyone.
But not only hospitals are collapsing, draws the attention of the president of the Association of Outpatient Doctors, Dr. Cosmin Alexandrescu. He stated in a televised intervention that if the value of the consultation point will decrease in the summer, outpatient and family doctors will be forced to close their offices. “On January 18, when we had the negotiations with CNAS, it was agreed to maintain the value of the point until July 1st, only that this maintenance was done by rolling over the money from the budgets of the 3rd and 4th quarters, so that from July 1st a new calculation and a new point value will be reached“. A problem would be if the Ministry of Finance will not be able to find the necessary sums to cover the current deficit in the second half of the year. “The point will collapse. And if this happens, we will probably be forced to stop the activity“, Alexandrescu also declared.
