HEART FAILURE

Medicare to Terminate Funding for St. Luke’s Heart Transplant Program in Houston

Federal health officials say the hospital hasn’t done enough to improve care after a string of patient deaths. The decision comes a month after ProPublica and the Houston Chronicle found serious problems with the program.

by Charles Ornstein, ProPublica, and Mike Hixenbaugh, Houston Chronicle June 22, 6 p.m. EDT

The federal Medicare program informed Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center on Friday that it would cut off funding to its heart transplant program in August, saying the Houston hospital has not done enough to fix shortcomings that endanger patients.

The decision by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is a devastating blow to what was once one of the nation’s most renowned heart transplant programs. Losing Medicare’s seal of approval on Aug. 17 would threaten its viability, experts say, depriving it of an essential source of funding. The termination could trigger private insurance companies to follow suit and force all 88 patients on the program’s waiting list to either pay out of pocket or, more likely, transfer to another hospital.

Losing Medicare funding is not unprecedented, but it is rare. St. Luke’s can appeal the termination, but that will not freeze the process, according to Medicare rules.

CMS’s decision comes just weeks after an investigation by ProPublica and the Houston Chronicle found that the program performed an outsized number of transplants resulting in deaths and has lost several top physicians in recent years. Multiple St. Luke’s doctors raised concerns about errors during operations and serious surgical complications after Dr. Jeffrey Morgan took over as the program’s top surgeon in 2016, and a few cardiologists began referring some of their patients to other hospitals for transplants.
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