In March 2004, Sharon Yacketta walked into University Hospital here for an operation to help control her incontinence. But her doctor, Robert S. Lai, botched the procedure, causing urine to leak into her abdomen. A month later, Dr. Lai and a second surgeon perforated her colon during a follow-up operation at University. Four years and 20 operations later, Ms. Yacketta has lost most of her colon and is still incontinent. “They messed my life up,” Ms. Yacketta said of her surgeons. “I hope those doctors rot.” Dr. Lai, who has left University and now practices outside Chicago, acknowledged that he and his surgical team had accidentally injured Ms. Yacketta but said he had not been negligent. Mistakes happen even at good hospitals, of course. But evidence shows that University, which is owned by the State University of New York system, is not a good hospital. In fact, in late 2006 a state commission recommended that it be scaled back and merged with another hospital. The state’s inability to follow through on that plan for University provides a stark example of how hard it can be — not just in New York, but around the nation — to close or shrink hospitals, even when there is evidence they are providing costly and below-average care. Certainly the evidence against University Hospital was strong. In 2006, patients at University were three times as likely to develop infections stemming from hospitals as were patients at the average New York hospital. HealthGrades, a company that rates hospitals using data from Medicare, ranks University among the least safe hospitals in the United States — although the hospital’s executives strongly dispute that assertion. University, meanwhile, is expensive to run. Yet, today, University remains under state ownership. And far from shrinking, University is expanding.
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