Hospital kept presence of Legionnaires' disease a secret

Jun 21 2005

A Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center battled for over a year to treat Legionnaires' disease bacteria in its water pipes but omitted telling patients or employees to take precautions.

It was only after six patients developed the disease and one died that the hospital gave staff a memo saying Legionnaires' had "recently" been found in its water system.

That memo did not mention that anyone had become sick because apparently Columbia Presbyterian did not want to "induce panic".

A freedom of information request has found the shocking disclosure among over 160 pages of state Health Department documents.

Attorneys for the families of two patients of the Washington Heights hospital who died of Legionnaires' have been stunned by the revelations.

Lawyer David Fair says the disease contributed to the April 13 death of patient Richard Montesano, 63, whose family would have brought in bottled water had it known the risks.

Robert Fader, an attorney for the husband of a 42-year-old Queens woman who died of Legionnaires' on March 17, said his client was unaware of the disease, even when she developed an infection after being released.

Each year thousands of patients die after catching deadly infections in hospitals. A bill is presently pending in the state Legislature which would force hospitals to report their infection rates, which advocates say would encourage better conditions and save untold lives.

Robert Kelly, Columbia Presbyterian's chief operating officer, sent hospital staff a memo on April 5 saying Legionnaires' was in the water.

In a conference call the next day, a city Health Department epidemiologist said Kelly should have noted that patients had been sickened "so that the risk is understood to be real".

Another high-ranking hospital official acknowledged this, but felt that such statements might only induce panic.

The hospital's infection control manager said, that the people who needed to know about the cases had been informed.

According to documents, the hospital first learned in March 2004 that a patient had developed Legionnaires' and that the disease was growing in its pipes.

The patient survived, as did another who developed the disease that August, but the hospital couldn't kill all the bacteria in the pipes, even after working with city and state health officials as well as private consultants.

The hospital banned showers for some patients and later told everyone to drink bottled water, but it didn't publicly acknowledge that patients were becoming sick until after a journalist wrote about Montesano's death April 20.