Somerset Medical Center Launches Ad Campaign to Set the Record Straight
Date
03/11/2004
Article
Somerset Medical Center is launching an advertising campaign this week to set the record straight about its role in the investigation of Charles Cullen and reinforce the medical center’s long-standing commitment to meeting the healthcare needs of its community. Advertisements will begin running Sunday in the New York Times, Star-Ledger and Courier News.
The advertisements are an open letter to the community from Andrew D. Stewart, chairman of the board of trustees of Somerset Medical Center. In the letter, Stewart expresses condolences to families of loved ones who may have been harmed in Cullen’s care and reasserts the medical center’s commitment to bringing Cullen to justice. He also addresses the public confusion in the community related to the complexity of the ongoing investigation.
“There is no early-warning system for the type of heinous crimes allegedly committed by Mr. Cullen,” Stewart writes. “Hospital medication dispensing systems are not programmed to red-flag or identify any patterns of criminal behavior – they are designed to assist nurses in caring for patients by allowing them to access the medication patients need in a prompt manner. When Somerset Medical Center first began investigating abnormal patient tests in June 2003, we believed we were dealing with medication errors and followed all standard methods for investigating those errors. Had we had proof at that time that one of our nurses had deliberately harmed one of our patients, we would have alerted the proper authorities and fired him immediately.”
The letter also renews the medical center’s call for reform of nursing hiring practices to free hospital employers from liability to give honest evaluations of why employees were terminated and require that licensing boards are notified when any health care professional is investigated for criminal activity.
Stewart concludes the letter by reminding the community of the medical center’s long tradition of caring.
“The actions of one nurse do not diminish Somerset Medical Center’s 104-year reputation for quality care or the outstanding efforts of our 1,800 employees and 650-member medical staff,“ he writes. “We are still the same medical center who has achieved patient satisfaction scores that are among the highest in the country… Our mission has not changed – we continue to provide comprehensive health care services of the highest quality to our region in a patient-first environment.”
