Tuberculosis scare jars Sierra Providence’s good reputation

Oct. 05--The Sierra Providence Health Network has become El Paso's largest hospital operator and has built an image of being a quality health care provider and good corporate citizen.

But that image has been severely tarnished in recent days by the possible tuberculosis exposure to more than 850 babies at the network's Providence Memorial Hospital.

An El Paso doctor said he's had some patients who don't want to use Sierra Providence hospitals in the wake of the TB scare.

A tuberculosis-infected patient care technician bathed and fed babies at Providence for about a year, and was allowed to continue working even as she showed possible TB symptoms, including reporting coughing up blood during a annual health screening in July. The worker tested positive for latent TB 10 years ago.

"It (Sierra Providence) has one of the best reputations in town," said Dr. Angel Rios, an El Paso obstetrician and a former president of the El Paso County Medical Society. The TB scare will damage the image of the entire Sierra Providence chain, which operates three hospitals, he said.

"It will take time to get their (public's) trust back. It's something difficult to gain, but easy to lose," Rios said. "The hospital has to create a more vigorous tracking system for quality control."

Others in the medical and business community said Sierra Providence should be able to regain its good name quickly if it stays open about the TB scare and makes necessary changes.

Rios said the TB event has not shaken his trust and use of Providence and Sierra Medical Center. He has no qualms about delivering babies at either hospital because both are safe and good hospitals, he said.

Rios uses Sierra the most, but since the TB event at Providence, he had several patients ask to change their baby deliveries from Sierra to Las Palmas Medical Center, a competing hospital that he also uses, Rios said.

They wanted to switch hospitals because they know Sierra and Providence are operated by the same company, Rios said, and "I try to honor patients' requests," he said.

The bad headlines come as the Sierra Providence Network has been on a roll.

It broke ground in August on a $100 million-plus West Side teaching hospital that it's building in collaboration with the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in El Paso, which will use the hospital to train medical and nursing students. It completed a $67 million expansion in May of its 6-year-old far East Side hospital, and late last year, it began $120 million in interior and exterior renovations at Sierra Medical Center and at 62-year-old Providence, including the Providence Children's Hospital, which operates on two floors inside the main Providence hospital.

Providence was a struggling not-for-profit hospital purchased in 1995 by Tenet Healthcare, of Dallas, Sierra Providence's parent company, and within several years began reporting multiple millions of dollars in profits.

Tenet's purchase of Providence was the start of Tenet's growth in El Paso. In 2001, it began steps to operate a children's hospital inside of the main Providence hospital. In 2006, it broke ground on its third hospital, the $146 millionSierra Providence East Medical Center, which opened in May 2008.

The network's growth in recent years has outstripped that of its rival Las Palmas Del Sol Healthcare, a network with two El Paso hospitals owned by the nation's other large hospital chain, HCA, based in Nashville, Tenn.

Richard Dayoub, president of the Greater El Paso Chamber of Commerce, said Sierra Providence's strong reputation and heavy community involvement, the integrity of its top executives, and the way those executives have quickly responded to the problem should help Providence and the entire network "recover from this situation, and resolve it."

"I don't care what business you're in -- the health care business, or any other industry -- they all get serious challenges if you're in business long enough," Dayoub said. "It's how you react to those situations that defines us."

Eric Evans, who came to El Paso two years ago to become Tenet's top El Paso executive, is handling this well, Dayoub said.

"He's being very direct, up front, and has made all the right decisions to resolve this as quickly as possible."

The network is posting updates on the TB problem on its website, including Providence's action plan.

Dayoub has gotten to know Evans because he is on the El Paso chamber's board of directors.

Evans is CEO of Providence and Providence Children's Hospital, and in June relinquished his role as CEO of Sierra Medical Center to take on a larger role as CEO of the Sierra Providence network, which has about 3,000 employees. He came to El Paso from another Tenet-owned network in Rowlett, Texas.

Last year, he was named one of 25 "rising stars" under age 40 in the health care industry by Becker's Hospital Review. Before getting into the hospital business with Tenet in 2004, he was an industrial engineer for the now defunct Saturn auto manufacturer.

Evans declined to be interviewed for this story. But in a message posted on the health network's website long before the TB problem, he said Sierra Providence has "a commitment to quality, service, cost efficiency and growth."

"The trust placed in us by our community is the foundation for our ongoing commitment," Evans wrote.

Sierra Providence Health Network's website and its hospitals' websites play up quality, as do most hospital companies -- touting top quality ratings for some of its services from health care rating organizations. Sierra Providence has a "commitment to quality" initiative aimed at patient safety and other issues, according to the network's website.

Providence in 2012, and the entire Sierra Providence Network for several years were rated by consumers as having the best image and best overall quality among hospitals in El Paso in consumer surveys done by the National Research Corp., the research company's website shows.

Lance Lunsford, vice president of advocacy communications for the Texas Hospital Association in Austin, said Sierra Providence's current image problem will be easy to overcome as long as Providence and the health network are providing quality services for patients in a variety of areas, he said.

"Tenet is one of the best health care systems in the country. It's a high-quality provider," Lunsford said.

The decision on which hospital to use is often not left to consumers, he noted. Doctors and insurance companies make most of those decisions, he said. So, Sierra Providence's relationships with doctors and insurance companies remain important, he said.

Texas Tech officials said the TB event doesn't change the school's relationship with Sierra Providence.

"We remain committed to the collaborations we have established with the Sierra Providence Health Network. Our confidence remains in their abilities to provide quality health-care to this region," Dr. Richard Lange, president of Texas Tech's Health Sciences Center in El Paso and dean of Tech's El Paso medical school, said in a statement.

Dr. Joseph Segapeli, a longtime pediatrician at El Paso Pediatric Associates, one of El Paso's largest and oldest pediatric practices, said it was a "little disturbing" that doctors in his group found out about the TB problem from news reports. The hospital should have contacted doctors about the problem, he said.

"As details come out, it's obvious there are some places they could have done better," he said.

El Paso Pediatric has several patients who were part of the TB exposure, but none, so far, have tested positive for the disease, he said.

So far, 300 babies have completed TB tests, and only two have tested positive for latent TB, El Paso health officials reported. None of those babies have been found to have active TB.

Segapeli said no parents of any of his patients have requested to stay away from Providence. He has no problems about continuing to use the hospital, he said. He's made calls on several newborn patients at Providence since the TB scare, he noted.

The TB scare isn't good for Providence's image, and it hurts El Paso's national image, Segapeli said. But it shouldn't hurt the hospital's image in the long term, as long as Providence officials are open about what happened and corrective measures are taken, he said.

"As a consumer and as a physician, I'd like to hear about methods being set up to prevent this in the future," Segapeli said.

For more information, visit sphn.com

Vic Kolenc may be reached at 546-6421.

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