Asides & Insides

The beleaguered Cleveland Clinic has spent months extricating itself from the deep doo-doo of physician and institutional conflicts of interest, but now it’s really stepped in it: Dog lovers are hot on its trail.

During a demonstration of a new medical device to sales representatives of the maker, San Jose, Calif.-based Micrus Endovascular Corp., a large mixed-breed dog died. The death occurred after a brain aneurism was induced in the previously healthy dog by an unnamed clinic surgeon. The device, an aneurysm coil, is supposed to stop brain damage from an aneurysm. After the procedure, the dog was euthanized.

The incident earlier this month drew investigators from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and howls of protest from animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. PETA says it learned of the demonstration on the day of the procedure and called leaders at the clinic and Micrus to offer an alternative method of demonstrating the device that wouldn’t involve animals, says Shalin Gala, a PETA research associate. Gala says the clinic and Micrus didn’t respond.

Micrus Vice President and General Counsel Carolyn Bruguera says, to her knowledge, Micrus officials were unaware of any nonanimal alternative to the demonstration procedure. The clinic, in a statement, says, “As an academic medical center, Cleveland Clinic does not allow procedures with animals for the sole purpose of sales training.” It reported the incident to the feds and launched an internal probe.

Two New Jersey hospitals are nursing their financial wounds and the hard feelings generated by a patient-dumping lawsuit after cumulatively caring for an Ecuadorean man for free for more than six months at a cost of nearly a half-million dollars.

Earlier this month, the patient, Gustavo Segovia, was flown home to Ecuador on an air ambulance and admitted to a hospital there. The $45,000 bill for the flight and the $10,000 for a 15-day hospital stay were borne by Hackensack (N.J.) University Medical Center.

That was just the tip of the iceberg of medical bills generated by this case. Segovia, 58, a blind paraplegic, was first admitted to Hackensack more than six months ago suffering from an aortic aneurysm. Approximately three months and $315,000 later, Hackensack tried to evict him, agreeing to pay the cost to transport him to his native land as well as for 15 days of hospital care there, says spokeswoman Anne Marie Campbell.

However, at the insistence of his family, who wanted him to remain in New Jersey, the hospital eventually agreed to discharge him to the home of a family friend who “represented” himself as a doctor, Campbell says. Within two hours of the discharge, Segovia was in the intensive-care unit at Holy Name Hospital in Teaneck, where he stayed for the next 100 days. Holy Name subsequently sued Hackensack for patient dumping, although that disagreement was settled in court late last year when Hackensack agreed to pay for Segovia’s transport back to Ecuador as well as two weeks of hospital care—“which is what we originally wanted to do,” Campbell says.

Meanwhile, Holy Name spokeswoman Jane Ellis calculates that Segovia’s stay at Holy Name cost approximately $1,100 a day for well over 100 days of care—about $110,000.

AARP Chief Executive Officer Bill Novelli had a “Dewey beats Truman” moment last week in Washington.

During a news conference with Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, and John Castellani, president of the Business Roundtable, Novelli held up a copy of the Washington Post and pointed to a full-page ad the trio’s groups had bought to hail a new partnership called Divided We Fail.

The Post’s ad folks had slipped up, leaving only the words “We Fail”—a message hardly on point with what the newly formed coalition has in mind. “We feel sure this is not an editorial comment by the Post,” Novelli quipped. But the Post’s ad team may not be laughing. It pledged to correct the mistake the next day, forgoing as much as $100,000 in revenue.

Everyone knows that more and more dermatologists and surgeons are branching out into the lucrative—and privately paid—field of cosmetic enhancement, but we were struck by the announcement that a well-known heart center had gotten in on the act.

The Arizona Heart Institute, Phoenix, recently opened Face Value, a full-service cosmetic skin-care center for the forever-young crowd. Its Web site boasts a “heart-to-heart approach about getting in your face,” assuring prospective clients they would have “peace of mind in knowing they’re receiving safe, quality care when getting Botox injections and other anti-wrinkle therapies.”

Dana Hock, a nurse practitioner and a cardiovascular nurse, performs all of the procedures. She says that being a nurse practitioner is important because she does not need physician supervision. “I never overlook the medications (patients) are on.”

Grayson Wheatley III, one of the institute’s cardiovascular surgeons, says Face Value is a “natural progression” from the institute’s Vein Center, which treats patients for arterial and venous diseases of the leg. He says the heart center wants to keep patients so they do not have to look elsewhere for treatment. “As people age, they may look to us for other treatments.”