TAMPA, Fla. _ The CEO of Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital and two other hospital administrators have resigned following a Tampa Bay Times investigation that found dramatic increases in the hospital's mortality rates for heart surgeries, Johns Hopkins announced Tuesday.
In a statement, the health system said All Children's CEO Dr. Jonathan Ellen, Vice President Jackie Crain and cardiovascular surgeon Dr. Jeffrey Jacobs had resigned.
Dr. Paul Colombani had also stepped down as chair of the department of surgery, the statement said. It was not immediately clear if he had left the hospital. He was removed from the hospital's website along with Ellen, Crain and Jacobs.
The Times investigation reported that the mortality rate at the hospital's Heart Institute tripled between 2015 and 2017.
The increase came after at least eight hospital employees warned supervisors about problems with the program's surgeries.
Several employees told the Times they warned Colombani directly. Jacobs was a co-director of the institute at the time of the problems and was one of the surgeons highlighted in the Times report. Crain oversaw risk management at the hospital.
Crain and Colombani declined to comment. The Times was unable to reach Ellen or Jacobs.
The board of Johns Hopkins Medicine, which owns and operates All Children's, has also commissioned an external review of the issues within the heart program.
"We will share the lessons learned from that review to ensure that Johns Hopkins, Johns Hopkins All Children's and other hospitals around the country can learn from and avoid the mistakes that were made," the health system's statement said.
"Losing a child is something no family should have to endure, and we are committed to learning everything we can about what happened at the Heart Institute, including a top-to-bottom evaluation of its leadership and key processes," the statement continued. "The events described in recent news reports are unacceptable."
The Times investigation reported that four physician assistants asked for a meeting with their supervisor and Colombani as early as 2015 to raise concerns about the surgeries performed by Jacobs and Dr. Tom Karl. Over the next year, at least four other employees also raised concerns about the program's surgeries. Three of them named at least one of the two surgeons.
But the hospital's leaders overlooked the warnings and allowed the two doctors to continue operating, the Times reported. In June 2016, a third surgeon who had handled many of the most complex procedures was pushed out of the program. Jacobs and Karl began performing all of the institute's hardest surgeries.
In the next 18 months, at least 11 children died after their procedures, even as the hospital began to turn away the most difficult cases, the Times found.
In an interview, U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor said the CEO of Johns Hopkins Medicine told her two weeks ago that that the health system's leaders didn't know employees at the hospital had raised concerns about the safety of heart surgeries before learning it from the newspaper.
A spokeswoman for the health system confirmed the conversation between Castor and the CEO, Dr. Paul Rothman, took place, but said she was not privy to its contents.
Ellen was in the top echelon of academic leaders at Johns Hopkins Medical School as Vice Dean for Pediatrics. Rothman runs both the academic and business sides of Johns Hopkins' medical efforts.
Kevin Sowers, the president of the Johns Hopkins Health System, will run All Children's temporarily, the health system's statement said.
"Hopefully, children won't continue dying," said Sandra Vazquez, whose son Sebastian died after heart surgery in 2017 and was featured in the Times investigation. "For many families it's too late, but other children can be saved."
"Change of leadership is the right call in wake of reports on All Children's severe medical failings," U.S. Rep. Charlie Crist wrote in a statement. "Our community demands accountability and corrective action to restore the standing and quality of care provided by what had for decades been a proud and respected institution."
Both Ellen and Colombani are longtime Johns Hopkins administrators who were moved into key roles at All Children's after the larger health system absorbed the hospital in 2011. Before then, the hospital had been locally run for nearly a century.
Castor said she reached out to Rothman to express "deep concern over the death rate and the problems."
She urged Rothman to be "proactive" and to "talk to the parents and medical community and larger community that has high expectations for Johns Hopkins and the quality of care," she said.
Last week, Castor and U.S. Rep. Charlie Crist asked the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to confirm it was investigating the reporting. A previous review the federal agency promised actually never happened, the Times reported.
State Sen. Aaron Bean, a Fernandina Beach Republican who chairs the Health and Human Services Appropriations Subcommittee, also promised to look into the hospital.
