Medical Ethics at OSF, Keith Steffen, Willie Fortune (Cont.)--December 2019

 

EB 1585--Medical Ethics at OSF, Keith Steffen, Willie Fortune (Cont.)--Dec 2019

So we looked for other children’s medical centers with pediatric heart surgery programs for Willie. I contacted Vanderbilt Children’s in Tennessee and spoke to their CEO regarding Willie’s precarious situation. The CEO accepted Willie but he told me he thought Willie was CHOI’s responsibility because Willie had his heart surgery and pacemaker placed at OSF-Children’s Hospital in Peoria. I agreed…but was very happy that Vanderbilt Children’s accepted Willie. We sent them $5,000 for the pacemaker.

With the help of a doctor from Tennesse, we brought Willie to Memphis where he had successful placement of a new pacemaker at Vanderbilt Children’s. And postoperatively with a much-improved heart rhythm, Willie felt much better. Shortly thereafter, Maria and I brought Willie to Peoria for him to recover with us in our home.

I asked Joe Piccione to take Willie’s case to the Ethics Committee at OSF for formal review. Willie had been abandoned in Haiti by OSF and patient abandonment is never good. As usual, I never heard whether Willie’s case was discussed by the Ethics Committee at OSF and never heard from anyone on the Ethics Committee besides Piccione who said he was pretty helpless to do anything. I wondered how the OSF Corporate Ethicist could be “helpless” to intervene for Willie, but in OSF’s toxic environment, he was probably right.

So the OSF Ethics Committee didn’t help out when they were needed. The issues they needed to discuss were very close to home–conflict of interest in the Peoria Area EMS and Willie Fortune who simply needed a new pacemaker.

Here are some recommendations to OSF regarding medical ethics from the American Medical Association that I have edited,  tailor-made for OSF  regarding Peoria Area EMS and Willie:

1. The function of the ethics committee should be to consider and assist in resolving unusual, complicated ethical problems involving issues that affect the care and treatment of patients within the health care institution. This would have been a potential source of help for Willie and the thousands of people in the Peoria area who dial 911 each year.

2. Ethics committee members should not have other responsibilities that are likely to prove incompatible with their duties as members of the ethics committee. This would be to avoid conflict of interest with members of the ethics committee. Dr. McShane told me that Keith Steffen sat on the OSF Ethics Committee, thus he did not think it was appropriate to bring up Advanced Medical Transport and their monopoly on prehospital care in Peoria.

3. Not mentioned above, I also discussed with Dr. McShane Keith Steffen’s management style in his office which consisted of threatening statements to me. I thought this, too, would be a good topic of discussion for the Ethics Committee. However, once again, McShane discouraged this idea because of Steffen’s presence on the Committee. Obviously, Steffen should have been removed from the Ethics Committee for multiple reasons.

4. When a religious order operates a medical center, the mission statements should be taken into consideration in the Committee’s recommendations. Respect for life for people of all ages and origins and taking care of the poor and marginalized should be important to the OSF Ethics Committee…that is, if they will discuss the topic.
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Denouement and Learning Points–2019

Ethics committees in medical centers should not be designed to protect hospitals. They should be formed by ethical people and should look at the ethics behind serious medical issues. When McShane and Piccione get their paychecks from OSF, it is hard to convince them of the importance of sensitive medical issues to be discussed. They are the gatekeepers and they protect OSF when they should be encouraging a moral approach.

Joe Piccione wrote in Interbusiness News in June, 2002:

“Another forum to ensure we in health care do what is right is the ethics committee. All hospitals have an ethics committee which can be accessed by patients, family members, and care providers to foster patient involvement or to discuss a concern or question. Maintaining and enhancing human dignity is one of the major guiding principles of ethics committees and health care in general.”

Too bad it doesn’t work that way at OSF.

A couple of years later in 2003, when The Catholic Diocese of Peoria formed a committee to discuss Haitian Hearts and OSF, once again McShane and Piccione were placed on the committee and they were successful in ending Haitian Hearts and OSF’s relationship. More on this later.

And regarding EMS, in 2003 I wrote to Bishop Jenky regarding the AMT/OSF monopoly of prehospital care in Peoria. Monsignor Rohlfs answered my letter for the Bishop. Rohlfs advised me to take the EMS issues to Rome for Pope John Paul II to consider. The Catholic leaders in Peoria were all sticking together for the almighty dollar.

I picketed OSF with Willie in 2004. A pediatric cardiologist who had taken care of Willie four years earlier walked up to us, asked me who Willie was, and then moved on quickly. And as we walked in front of Sister Canisia’s office, she appeared at the window and Keith Steffen appeared behind her. As Sister was reading our sign, Steffen threw back his head and made it look like he was laughing.

Our leaders were not acting like leaders. The Sisters had lost control of their beloved hospital.

 

John A. Carroll, MD

www.haitianhearts.org