Wynn Hospital receives another validation of its care

Wynn Hospital in Utica has been recertified as a comprehensive stroke center by the New York State Department of Health and by DNV.

The designation means that the hospital is well qualified to treat the most serious cases of stroke.

“With stroke care, you must have the best clinicians and resources, but also the ability to act organizationally with extreme efficiency because of the time-critical nature of these events,” said Varun V. Reddy, the health system’s director of stroke and neuroendovascular surgery. “This certification from DNV Healthcare and NYS DOH validates all the effort we have put into this program to ensure the health and safety of our patients.”

MVHS is the seventh comprehensive stroke center in Upstate New York and the only one between Syracuse and Albany.

Nationally there were 297 comprehensive stroke centers in 2022, according to survey results published in the Journal of the American College of Emergency Physicians. Only 12 of them are thrombectomy-capable, meaning they can surgically remove blood clots in arteries, according to the article.

Surgeons at Wynn Hospital perform thrombectomies.

Certification

The Mohawk Valley Health System has included a comprehensive stroke center since its St. Luke’s Campus received the designation in July 2021.

And five days after the hospital on the St. Luke’s Campus closed and Wynn Hospital opened in October, surveyors from DNV Healthcare, a division of the private company authorized to provide certain accreditations and certifications to health care facilities, inspected the new hospital and reaffirmed the designation.

DNV staff returned in May for their annual survey to renew the stroke center certification, a process that involved reviewing records and the hospital’s protocols for stroke care, interviewing patients and staff, and touring the hospital. Inspectors consider the full range of stroke care: diagnosis, treatment, rehabilitation and education as well as measuring outcomes.

“The surveyors recognized the exceptional care from the staff,” reads a health system statement on the recertification, “state-of-the-art equipment, tested and proven processes, and provided many accolades on the Wynn Hospital.”

Comprehensive stroke centers offer the kind of care most often found in larger cities and major health system, MVHS President/CEO Darlene Stromstad pointed out.

“And we are doing this right here in our community,” she added. “In fact, we continue to be among the largest – typically ranking second or third – comprehensive stroke centers in New York State. It is truly impressive.”

Open heart pause

The recertification comes as a vote of confidence during a somewhat troubled time for the hospital. Officials decided to pause its open heart surgery program on May 8 given concerns raised by medical staff and echoed by health department inspectors.

They were concerned by some unexpected complications and deaths as well as the dwindling number of referrals for surgery, which can be a sign of outside concerns with the program.

The referrals also meant that the health system’s two cardiothoracic surgeons were each only performing about half of the minimum 50 surgeries each every year in state guidelines. To a certain extent, there is a correlation between open heart surgery outcomes and the number of procedures a surgeon performs annually.

A third party agency is currently conducting an outside review of the program and will make recommendations for improvement. Hospitals officials have said they hope to have the program up and running again by late summer. The hospital’s internal investigation has focused on the role of the two surgeons and their future with the health system remains uncertain, officials said.

The hospital also paused, but has now restarted, structural heart procedures (that do not involve cutting open the chest and putting the patient on a heart-lung machine) because a cardiothoracic surgeon has to be in the room for them. But MVHS has now found surgeons willing to cover the procedures.

Officials have insisted that all its other cardiac services, including treatment for heart attacks, are still available and there are no concerns about their safety. Only a small fraction of heart attack patients require emergency open heart surgery and they can be stabilized at Wynn Hospital and safely transferred to another facility, officials have said.

Safety misinformation

The hospital has also been plagued since its opening by misinformation and rumors spread online questioning the safety of the care it provides, the adequacy of its staffing and supplies, and the safety of the new building itself.

Hospital staff have said that they have heard stories of patients who stayed away out of fear and others who were afraid, but came in anyway, only to have their fears calmed.

Hospital officials have noted that state inspectors and DNV surveyors have visited the hospital several times since it opened and, except for the open heart surgery issue, validated the hospital’s care.

The state gave provisional certification to Wynn Hospital as a Level III trauma center in February.  The hospital on MVHS' St. Elizabeth Campus was a trauma center, but the designation doesn't carry over to a new building.

The accreditation process takes three years so Wynn Hospital will remain provisionally certified wile the American College of Surgeons does a consultative visit next year, provides feedback and returns in 2026 for a verification visit.

And the hospital has received overall accreditation. The inspectors who did that survey also looked into complaints that had been made about mold, leaks, stairwell access during code events and parking. But they did not find any merit to any of those complaints, officials said.

This article originally appeared on Observer-Dispatch: Health department recertifies MVHS' Wynn Hospital as stroke center