page_title: Richmond Medical Center
section_title: 1997 Patient deaths
hierarchical_section_title: Richmond Medical Center / Controversies / 1997 Patient deaths
caption_attribution_description: Sky view pharmacy
context_page_description: Richmond Medical Center also known as Kaiser Richmond, Kaiser Foundation Hospital Richmond and RMC, is a large Kaiser Permanente hospital in downtown Richmond, California which serves 77,000 members registered under its medical plans. It opened in 1995 replacing the historic 1942 Richmond Field Hospital that serviced Liberty shipyard workers and thus gave birth to the HMO. However it was deemed seismically unsafe and this new campus was built.
context_section_description: In April 1997 the hospital was chastised by federal investigators from the United States Health Care Financing Administration for several patient deaths and dangerous understaffing, among a 104 total violations. The deaths were investigated by the California Department of Health Services on behalf of the USHCFA and were found to be the fault of the hospital. In fact the California Nurses Association had already reported repeatedly and to no avail that the hospitals were understaffed especially for critical care positions. Kaiser claimed the nurses' complaints were motivated based on Kaiser's plan to reduce their salary and benefits, while the CNA contended they had been complaining for at least 2 years before their labor disagreement came into play. Richmond Medical Center was also censured for sending patients to other hospitals via their own cars and not ambulances, even if they were alone and in labor, as a common practice. Further violations for the hospital that were described by investigators and itself as "deficient" including poor recordkeeping, no standardized nor documented procedures, and understaffing of nurses in the emergency department.
  The deficiencies nearly led to Kaiser Permanente's losing its Medicare rating and therefore $2.9 billion in funding systemwide. During the investigation the hospital had to stop admitting ER patients and was forced to send them to the next closest hospitals Doctors Medical Center in San Pablo and Kaiser Oakland. When conditions warrant, patients are routinely sent to Children's Hospital Oakland, John Muir, or Kaiser Oakland. Nineteen more nurses were hired and staffing of critical positions was increased. Another step taken was an agreement for Brookside Hospital to accept an average of three critically ill patients daily. It had been identified as a flaw that RMC had no agreement with another hospital to take in these patients, and in fact some died waiting for, or during transport to other hospitals. In May 1997 the hospital and the health care organization were able to convince the government to reverse the decision after launching remediation actions at Kaiser Richmond and its mother campus in Oakland.
caption: Main hospital entrance and parking path canopy
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