One year ago, a 6 year-old boy died in the emergency room of Stony Brook University Medical Center as a result of heart complications. The hospital violated New York State regulations in its failure to determine that the boy had an enlarged heart and consider different explanations for the boy’s condition.
Sadly, the hospital treated the boy, on three previous occasions, for vomiting. In the month before his fatal visit to the emergency center, the boy was diagnosed with reflux. New York State has also discovered that four days before the boy’s death, a chest x-ray taken at the hospital demonstrated an enlarged heart, a serious condition. No further action was taken as a result of the x-ray.
As a preventive measure to avert such oversights in the future, Stony Brook Hospital will now implement a system in their emergency care center know as the “Watchful Eye Algorithm.”
The Watchful Eye Algorithm is based on the “Pediatric Early Warning Scores (PEWS)”, originally implemented at the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital.
The new system aims to increase efficiency and provide higher quality of care by monitoring a patient’s overall health. Blood pressure, breathing, heart rate, and other functions are measured in real time, providing hospital staff with regular updates in the form of numeric scores. When scores decrease or increase to particular levels, outside of normal ranges, doctors are called in to take action. The new warning system will thereby help doctors predict life-threatening events.