The hospital malpractice lawyers at Berkowitz Hanna represent patients who are mistreated in any way while under the care of hospitals throughout the state, including St. Francis Hospital and Medical Center. Whether accidental or intentional, hospital mistakes can cost a person his or her life. To speak with an attorney at our firm to find out how we can help you, please contact us today.
The Sisters of Saint Joseph of Chambéry opened St. Francis Hospital and Medical Center in 1897 as a two-room hospital in the Asylum Hill neighborhood of Hartford, Connecticut. Today it is New England’s largest Catholic hospital. Its initial emphasis was on inpatient care for Catholic immigrants. The hospital opened its first research laboratory in 1902 when tuberculosis was an epidemic in Hartford.
St. Francis and Mount Sinai Hospital, a Jewish-sponsored facility, entered a corporate merger in 1995. The hospital opened the ten-floor John T. O’Connell Tower in 2011, housing an emergency department with 70 treatment areas, 13 sheltered ambulance bays, and a rooftop helipad. The tower’s upper floors have 19 operating rooms and 135 private patient rooms. Two of its floors treat orthopedics patients.
The hospital has 617 licensed beds and 65 bassinets. Its principal clinical focuses are on women’s and children’s services, oncology, cardiology, orthopedics and rehabilitation.
Among St. Francis’ prominent women’s and children’s areas are 14 labor/delivery/recovery rooms; 30 private postpartum suites; a 26-bassinet well baby nursery; a Level III neonatal intensive care unit with 28 bassinets; two delivery rooms for cesarean section patients; and an antepartum diagnostic center. The hospital welcomes deliveries by nurse midwives.
Also offered for gynecologic patients are daVinci® robotic surgery and a Comprehensive Breast Health Center. To delay the anxiety of waiting for mammogram results, the breast center transmits digital x-rays to an on-site radiologist who reads them and reports the outcomes immediately.
According to the hospital’s website, the facility has one of New England’s leading outpatient cancer treatment centers. More than 1,500 patients visit the Saint Frances/Mount Sinai Regional Cancer Center each year. Patients are participating in over 100 clinical trials paid for by the National Cancer Institute. The cancer center also has a CyberKnife® and the most current linear accelerators.
St. Francis’ Hoffman Heart and Vascular Institute of Connecticut is the state’s largest open-heart surgery center. The hospital claims that it responds the fastest to heart attacks in the area and does more cardiac catheterizations in the state. St. Francis has the Phillips Women’s Heart Program which provides free risk assessments and two-hour education sessions by a registered nurse, registered dietician and exercise physiologist.
The Connecticut Joint Replacement Institute, which opened in 2007, is the largest joint replacement center in the state.
NBC reports a shocking lawsuit filed against St. Francis Hospital and Medical Center on behalf of 32 people who claimed to have been sexually abused by a prominent doctor (now dead) who worked for the hospital. According to reports by NBC and the Hartford Courant, St. Francis settled 32 cases (the first of more than 90 involving the late endocrinologist Dr. George Reardon) in May 2011.
The hospital was accused of failing to properly monitor the physician who was found to have sexually molested scores of children during three decades at the institution. Reardon, who rose to become Chief of Endocrinology during his St. Francis tenure, was found to have hidden in a basement wall tens of thousands of pornographic slides and videos of children in sexual acts and positions. Investigators believed Reardon had victimized at least 500 children and thought that number could be in the thousands.
“We believe that we have proven Dr. Reardon was a master manipulator,” according to a statement by hospital officials, “who deceived his patients, their parents and his colleagues.” The abuse was discovered in 2007 by a homeowner remodeling his home after buying it from Reardon. Reardon had died in 1998. In April 2012, the hospital and its insurers settled virtually all of the suits. The first complaints were brought against Reardon by a brother and sister in 1987, who said the abuse occurred from 1956 to 1961.
This is a shocking case of hospital malpractice and abuse. The purpose of the lawsuits is not only hold the hospital accountable for not properly monitoring its doctors, but also to ensure that something like this never happens again.
Hospital malpractice of any kind can have devastating, life-changing effects on a patient. Sexual abuse of patients, especially children, is one of the worst possible types of malpractice.
Many other instances of hospital malpractice arise from neglect. Examples include:
If you believe that you or someone in your family has been harmed by hospital malpractice or medical malpractice, you should speak with an attorney at Berkowitz Hanna as soon as possible. Our Connecticut malpractice at St. Francis Hospital lawyers have experience in a number of complex malpractice claims against hospitals throughout the state.
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