Patient: “I’ll never know if it’s cancer.” Hospital Apologizes In Surreal Phone Call As Anesthesia Wears Off…
BY: ANDREW COLTON | Editor and Publisher
BOCA RATON, FL (BocaNewsNow.com) (Copyright © 2021 MetroDesk Media, LLC) — Delray Beach resident Josh Weiser can not believe the call he received from Boca Raton Regional Hospital on July 9th — as the anesthesia from his gallbladder removal surgery was still wearing off.
“I had surgery on July 8th,” said Weiser, exclusively to BocaNewsNow.com. “On the 9th, I got a call from the hospital and I’m still so out it. The woman says ‘I’m from the hospital and I have risk management on the phone’.”
Weiser assumed they were just checking in to make sure he was okay. But they weren’t.
“They told me they lost my gallbladder,” remembered Weiser, “and I can’t have pathology because they lost the organ. The woman from risk management said it was clearly human error.”
Weiser, 36, said he has an almost life-long history of benign tumors in his leg. Doctors ordered the gallbladder removal to determine if a polyp they found in the organ was cancerous. If so, early detection and treatment are keys to survival.
But he’ll never know — now that Boca Raton Regional lost the gallbladder that they removed from Weiser’s body.
Boca Raton Regional Hospital Spokesperson Michael Maucker told BocaNewsNow.com that he can’t discuss the incident.
“Due to laws protecting patient privacy,” said Maucker, “we are not able to comment on patient care matters.”
It was not immediately clear who would have had the gallbladder outside of the surgical suite, how it could have been mishandled, whether the gallbladder could be sitting somewhere in the hospital, or if it could have been labeled with someone else’s identification.
Boca Raton Regional is owned by Baptist Health South Florida which also counts Bethesda East and West, Doctor’s Hospital in Coral Gables, Miami Cardiac and Vascular Hospital in Kendall, and Baptist Children’s as part of its portfolio.
Weiser can’t believe that a major healthcare provider could be so incompetent.
“They barcode everything,” said Weiser. “How do they mess something like that up? You think they’re going to do great. They didn’t. You lose so much trust. I volunteered there is a kid.”
Weiser, a human rights attorney, said he is considering his next course of action. He has already filed a grievance with Florida’s Agency for Healthcare Administration.
