One physician was fired, one demoted, and both reported to the Office of Professional Medical Misconduct after issues with failing to provide sufficient clinical oversight on echocardiograms done at Harlem hospital.

A New York Times article, published May 25th, 2010, ‘Heart Tests at Hospital Went Unread‘ explained that:

“Nearly 4,000 tests for heart disease performed over the last three years at Harlem Hospital Center — more than half of all such tests performed — were never read by doctors charged with making a diagnosis, hospital officials acknowledged Tuesday.”

The protocol developed was supposed to improve the read times for potentially abnormal tests, however, it seems that there were some holes.

“While the process the doctors followed may have alerted cardiologists to those echocardiograms that were most likely to be abnormal, the failure to read the echocardiograms in a timely manner is inexcusable and may have placed patients at risk,”

With the advances in technology and the availability of telemedicine in its many forms, it seems there were more than enough potential solutions to prevent this from happening.