Florida Heart Surgery Law Bugs Tenet Healthcare

Bug Stoppers promised to "meet or exceed" the hospital's requirements for $5,900 per month.

But Sandra Perdew, the CFO of yet another firm, was still listing serious deficiencies the following year. She mentioned fly-infested mops and slime in the surgical trash room. She said the entire sterile processing room was "in poor condition and certainly in need of cleaning and maintenance." She said the general surgery unit had holes in the wall and cups of Pepsi on the trash can. She also mentioned concerns about the decontamination room and the nurses' lounge.

Perdew, who felt that her previous suggestions had gone unheeded, sounded clearly frustrated. And she specifically portrayed an "ongoing small fly problem in the food area" as a threat to the rest of the facility.

"The maintenance and structural issues (in the food area) that we went over ... remain the same," she wrote in February 2002. "It is imperative that we work together to get this problem under control."

That same year, a flood of patient lawsuits -- accusing the hospital of lax infection control that led to serious infections -- caught the government's attention. In a rare death threat, Medicare warned it would yank funding from the hospital if it didn't address its concerns. The hospital resolved the matter, keeping its Medicare funding intact, early last year.

But the hospital still got hurt. The Palm Beach Post reported last November that annual profits at Palm Beach Gardens had fallen by half in the fiscal year ending May 2003. However, the hospital -- one of only four with open-heart units in the state -- went on to say that business has picked up since that time.

"We've recently seen an increase in admissions compared to last year," hospital CEO Mary Jo Gregory told the local newspaper. "The hospital is well on the road to recovery."