State Fines Parkway Hospital $32,000 For Unnecessary Surgeries On Mentally Ill

The physicians, including Dr. Jamille Peress, former chief of urology, had their licenses taken by DOH after the incidents first came to light.
Parkway is a proprietary hospital in Forest Hills, owned and operated by physicians.
Parkways senior vice president Dr. Frank Mazzagatti said the Hospital will challenge the findings, which he said were part of a proposed settlement the Hospital rejected.
Novello said the 12 mentally ill patients were admitted to Parkway with invalid consent forms on a Thursday afternoon, were operated on, stayed in the hospital over the weekend and were transferred back to Leben Home the following week without any prior history of illness to dictate the type of surgeries performed.
Last May, Novello ordered that the Leben Home for Adults operating license be suspended and that MediSys Health Network, Inc. (a not-for-profit organization that operates Jamaica Hospital) be installed as the temporary operator of the Leben Home to ensure that the residents were protected from any further endangerment to their physical and mental health.
As a result of the DOH investigation, Parkway Hospital was cited for 16 violations of the State Hospital Code, resulting in a maximum fine of $32,000. Deficiencies found and cited were in the area of governing body, medical staff, quality assurance program, patients rights, surgical services and laboratory service. The proposed fine of $32,000 amounts to $2,000 per violation, the maximum monetary penalty allowable under the law.
DOH has ordered Parkway to submit a plan of correction describing how each of the identified deficiencies is to be addressed, what corrective actions will be taken, and the protocols to be implemented so as to insure that similar kinds of violations will not recur.
Parkway will also be required to submit quarterly reports to DOH for a period of one year to detail activities undertaken to implement corrective actions and include an assessment of the effectiveness of those corrective measures.
"Beyond the two doctors-calculated manipulation of these patients, perhaps the most disturbing part of this case is the fact that the hospital failed to take necessary actions in the face of staff complaints," Novello said. "The Department will continue to take aggressive actions against those hospitals and or health care providers who would deliberately and consciously violate the rights and trust of patients."