Hospitals across Orange County and around the country are making mistakes that can be harmful, even deadly, to patients, but the public rarely finds out about them.
Details of conditions inside Mission Hospital – which temporarily closed its 14 operating rooms last fall because of a small outbreak of infections associated with orthopedic surgeries – were hidden by the federal government for six months.
Its inspection report became available under the Public Records Act in May. That was one year after four patients got sick during surgeries and six months after regulators visited the Mission Viejo and Laguna Beach campuses and found the hospital’s infection control department was understaffed and that in at least two instances, an insect had gotten into an operating room.
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