The surgery went fine.Her doctors left for the day.
Four hours later, Paulina Tam started gasping for air. Internal bleed-
ing was cutting off her windpipe, a well-known complication of the
spine surgery she had undergone. But a Medicare inspection report
says that nobody who remained on duty that evening at the North-
ern California surgery center could help. In desperation, a nurse did
something that would not happen in a hospital: She dialed 911.
By the time an ambulance delivered Tam to the emergency room,
the 58-year-old mother of three was lifeless, according to the report.in March 2018 discov-
ered that more than
260 patients have died
since 2013 after in-and-
out procedures done at
surgery centers across
the country. Dozens of
people, some as young
as two years old, have
perished after rou-
tine procedures such
as tonsillectomies and
colonoscopies.
The investigation—
which involved ex-
aminations of more than 12,000 state
and Medicare inspection records and
interviews with dozens of doctors,
health-policy experts, and patients—
revealed some startling trends. Chief
among them: At least 14 patients of
the more than 260, counting Tam,
died after complex spinal surgeries. At
least 25 people with a variety of under-
lying medical conditions left surgery
centers and died within minutes or
days. They included an Ohio womanIf Tam had been op-
erated on at a hospital,
a few simple steps could
have saved her life. But
like hundreds of thou-
sands of patients each
year, Tam went to one of
the nation’s 5,600-plus
surgery centers. Surgery
centers were created
nearly 50 years ago as
low-cost alternatives for
minor procedures. They
now outnumber hospi-
tals, as federal regulators
have signed off on an ever-widening
array of outpatient surgeries in an ef-
fort to cut federal health-care costs.
Thousands of times each year, these
centers call 911 when patients expe-
rience complications ranging from
minor to fatal. Yet no one knows how
many people die as a result of those
complications, because no national
authority tracks the tragic outcomes.
An investigation by Kaiser Health
News and the USA Today NetworkPaulina Tam had
surgery to replace two
disks in her back.108 february 2019
previous spread: tonyng/shutterstock. this page: courtesy the tam familyReader’s Digest