NCDHHS closes the only abortion clinic that wouldve met new requirements+State Health Director quits

[d00ditsemily]

The NC Department of Health and Human Services has suspended the license of the only abortion clinic in North Carolina that would have met the requirements laid out in the motorcycle safety/abortion restriction bill signed into law this week

Comments

[crossfire]

[wrestlingdog]

OMG I love this!!

[fluteaphrael]

So much icon love.

[shortsweetcynic]

if that's true, then it's bad, but the timing stinks.

jesus christ, NC is making Florida look good right now, and that takes some doing because as far as I'm concerned this whole fucking state can sink into the ocean.

[vvalkyri]

yeah, this. I was expecting to see some of the insanity Virginia was regulating, which essentially insisted that they adhere to the same building standards as stand-alone surgery centers.

How fishy is this?

[moonshaz]

This fishy?

Re: How fishy is this?

[moonshaz]

And it makes me feel like this:

[xo_bumblebee]

This is fishy, but at the same time, I wouldn't want to have procedures done at any clinic with violations like that, abortion or not. (I am pro-choice and this sucks, but...do you guys see what I'm trying to say?)

[tsaraven]

The taped tubing is really the only thing bothersome to me. Since I am suspicious of the inspection, it is quite possible they had just finished a procedure in a surgical room (and hadn't cleaned up yet) and they were faced with a barged-in inspection. If they had said "We were just about to clean that" it wouldn't have mattered to someone looking for reasons to close the place. For the other things, they may have had trouble maintaining contracts with community members (like a pharmacist) so I don't want to blame them about that just yet. It's the reason that clinics can't get hospital admitting privileges since they don't want to become a new target to be protested at best and firebombed at worst.

[xo_bumblebee]

Agreed, and I didn't even think of it that way. I mean, my husband is a cook in the Army, and they've had food inspectors come in right as they're serving, so of course sanitation isn't perfect because they were just prepping stuff, and they get marked down for it. Or they'll take the temps of meat that's already on the serving line, and it's below the safe temp, but when it was cooked, it was cooked to the right temp and it's just a little bit cooler, because you know, they're serving it. So it definitely could have been a scenario like that.

[d00ditsemily]

I get what you're trying to say, but some of the regulations that were broken were silly (like no minutes on physicians meetings... even though there was only one physician)

Here's what FemCare released

The clinic does not expect the closure to be permanent, however. Dr. Lorraine Cummings, Femcare’s owner and operator, said in a statement that the clinic is aware of the deficiencies cited by DHHS and is already addressing them. “Since the state’s last site visit in August 2006 there have been no changes in our operating protocols, but increasing regulations require us to make changes,” Cummings said. “Standards that were acceptable when we were last inspected have changed and, as soon as we were notified of them two weeks ago, we began the process of meeting each one of them. We have had no patient infections using our former protocols. We expect to be in compliance soon with the required standards and will return to serving our patients as soon as possible.”

[suwiel]

Fishy or not, if the clinic really did break those rules, they should be shut down. Those were some gross safety issues, if true.

[d00ditsemily]

Here's FemCare's response

The clinic does not expect the closure to be permanent, however. Dr. Lorraine Cummings, Femcare’s owner and operator, said in a statement that the clinic is aware of the deficiencies cited by DHHS and is already addressing them. “Since the state’s last site visit in August 2006 there have been no changes in our operating protocols, but increasing regulations require us to make changes,” Cummings said. “Standards that were acceptable when we were last inspected have changed and, as soon as we were notified of them two weeks ago, we began the process of meeting each one of them. We have had no patient infections using our former protocols. We expect to be in compliance soon with the required standards and will return to serving our patients as soon as possible.”

[lurkerwisp]

That's exactly what I was thinking. I wouldn't want any kind of procedure at all done in a clinic that wasn't cleaning their stuff correctly. Yikes.