The Sioux San Hospital is an Indian Health Service facility in Rapid City, South Dakota. Photo by Colorado National Guard Medical Detachment / Flickr
A six-month-old boy suffered a seizure after a provider at an Indian Health Service facility in South Dakota failed to consider his full medical needs, the Associated Press reports. The boy was taken to the Sioux San Hospital in Rapid City by his mother in April, according to a inspection report obtained by the AP. The first provider diagnosed him with a "viral respiratory infection" and sent him home without getting information about his medical history, the AP said. When the mother returned 12 hours later, a different provider discovered that the boy had a history of respiratory distress. He ended up suffering a seizure and had to be placed in intensive care in another facility, the AP reported. “The Hospital failed to provide a medical screening examination (MSE) that was, within reasonable clinical confidence, sufficient to determine whether or not an Emergency Medical Condition (EMC) existed," the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Service wrote in the inspection report obtained by the AP. The first provider acknowledged that he would have acted differently had he known about the boy's history, the AP said. The CMS has given the IHS until May 28 to come up with a corrective plan. Unless changes are made, Sioux San will lose its ability to bill for Medicaid and Medicare on June 15. "These deficiencies substantially limit the hospital's capacity to render adequate care and constitute and immediate and serious threat to the health and safety of patients," Steven Chickering, an associate regional administrator at the CMS, said in a May 23 letter to Sioux San. The facility serves a large urban Indian population in Rapid City. Tribal members from other parts of South Dakota and from neighboring states also go there for services that may not available in their communities. Sioux San is the third hospital in the Great Plains Area to come under scrutiny. Last summer, the Winnebago Service Unit, which serves the Omaha Tribe and the Winnebago Tribe, lost CMS certification after the IHS failed to correct known problems. A cut-off was averted at the Rosebud Service Unit and the Pine Ridge Service Unit, both in South Dakota, after the IHS reached agreements with the CMS that will run for the next year while improvements are made. Get the Story:
South Dakota Indian hospital threatened with funds cutoff (AP 5/24)
IHS hospital in 'immediate jeopardy,' feds say (The Sioux Falls Argus Leader 5/24) Government Accountability Office Report:
INDIAN HEALTH SERVICE: Actions Needed to Improve Oversight of Patient Wait Times (April 29, 2016) Senate Committee on Indian Affairs Report:
In Critical Condition: The urgent need to reform the Indian Health Service’s Aberdeen Area (December 2010)
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