Hospital to compensate families of drugged infants

INDIANAPOLIS -- Methodist Hospital has offered to financially compensate families of two premature infants who died after being given an overdose of a blood thinner, the hospital CEO said Tuesday.\nTwo girls less than a week old died Saturday at the Indianapolis hospital's Neonatal Intensive Care Unit after being given adult doses of heparin, which is often used to prevent blood clots that could clog intravenous tubes. Four other premature babies were still being treated after being given too powerful a dose of the drug that a pharmacy technician accidentally stored in the NICU's drug cabinet.\nHospital officials offered to pay funeral expenses for Emmery Miller and D'myia Alexander Nelson. The hospital also would pay for family counseling and provide financial restitution to all six families affected, said Sam Odle, president and CEO of Methodist Hospital, which is part of Clarian Health Partners.\n"We are acutely aware that nothing can adequately compensate these families for their loss," Odle said.\nOdle also revealed that in 2001, a similar overdose of the drug was given to two patients in the hospital's Pediatric Intensive Care Unit. They recovered, he said.\nNone of the six families has talked to the hospital yet about possible compensation, Odle said.\n"We would handle each family on an individual basis," Odle said. "We will make sure that the families are (as) satisfied with the outcome as we possibly can."\nOf the four other infants overdosed with the drug, three were hospitalized in critical but stable condition Tuesday at Methodist and were no longer showing ill effects from the heparin, officials said. A fourth was in critical and unstable condition at Riley Hospital for Children.\nSince the overdoses, the hospital has taken steps to ensure the mistake does not happen again, as it did in 2001 when dosages were confused in two pediatric patients receiving heparin to keep intravenous lines open, Odle said.\nAfter that mistake, the hospital eliminated other doses of heparin so that only one was available.\n"While this change greatly reduced the opportunity for further error, the circumstances of this past weekend exposed system weaknesses that have led us to further refine our system of checks and balances," Odle said.\nHeparin arrives at the hospital in premeasured vials and pharmacy technicians place the doses in a computerized drug cabinet. When nurses need to administer the drug, they retrieve it from a specific drawer, which then locks again.\nEarly Saturday morning, a pharmacy technician with more than 25 years of experience accidentally took the wrong dosage from inventory and stocked it in the drug cabinet in the Newborn Intensive Care Unit, Odle said. Nurses accustomed to only one dosage of heparin being available administered too much.\nMethodist has since changed procedures again and no longer keeps certain doses of heparin in inventory. All newborn and pediatric critical care units will require a minimum of two nurses to validate any dose of heparin.\nStaff members involved with Saturday's mistake were receiving counseling and taking time off until they feel comfortable returning to work, hospital officials said.\nDeb Hutchens, a neonatal nurse practitioner, said NICU nurses were devastated.\n"I feel like this is a NICU family," she said. "We are very close. We all feel very deep sorrow. It's just going to be a very long healing process for all of us."\nThe hospital on Sunday told other parents whose children are at the NICU about the overdose.\nDoug and Trisha Ripperger of Indianapolis said they felt safe at Methodist with their daughter, Julia, who was born prematurely about a month ago and was heading home Tuesday. The couple and other parents met Sunday with the hospital chaplain, who explained the heparin overdose. Their daughter was not administered heparin.\n"We're obviously very sad for those parents and those families," Trisha Ripperger said. "But we've had excellent care from day one. There was never a thought of taking her out of here"