An accident at Georgetown’s on-campus heating and cooling plant left one man injured and multiple buildings without power this morning.
The man, a worker in the plant, was electrically shocked and transported to Georgetown University Hospital to be evaluated, according to DC Fire and Emergency Medical Services spokesperson Pete Piringer. The extent of the worker’s injuries is unknown at this time.
GERMS was initially dispatched to the scene at 10:56 a.m. and transported the injured worker to GU Hospital’s Department of Emergency Medicine at 11:02 a.m. According to GERMS President Colin Brody (COL ’11), DC Fire EMS responded shortly thereafter.
After the accident, power outages were reported in Healy Hall, Copley Hall, White-Gravenor Hall, and Lauinger Library.
According to DC Fire EMS’s Twitter account, the accident occurred in a “chiller plant” within the heating and cooling plant.
Chillers are often used on college campuses and other large residential complexes to produce cold water for air conditioning and refrigeration systems. Georgetown’s heating and cooling plant is located directly south of the Yates Field House.
Last Tuesday night, at approximately 8:30 p.m., a Georgetown Hospital employee was found stabbed in her apartment in the Bellevue neighborhood of Southwest D.C.
EMS personnel pronounced Tawanna Barnes-Copeland, 41, a phlebotomist at the hospital, dead on the scene from “apparent stab wounds,” according to by Captain Farish of MPD’s homicide unit.
A family member discovered the body and alerted police, who found no signs of forced entry to the home.
No motives or suspects have been identified, and the investigation by the homicide unit is ongoing.
Last month, Georgetown University Hospital performed a total of 16 kidney transplants in a week thanks to its partnership with the United Network for Organ Sharing.
UNOS, an organization that uses a national database to pair individuals for organ donations, coordinated the program with Georgetown Hospital and three other hospitals around the country. According to the Associated Press, Georgetown Hospital now transplants kidneys to nearly 30 percent of the people on its waiting list, double the number of transplants it completed before the hospital joined the kidney exchange.
Dr. Keith Melancon, the hospital’s kidney transplant director, plans to comb through records to find more patients who were not previously matched.
Georgetown University Hospital failed to realize that a woman who died while waiting for a liver transplant was in the hospital, according a lawsuit filed in D.C. Superior Court.
While Donna Roy was in the hospital in 2008, an employee from the Georgetown Transplant Institute called Roy’s home phone number to notify her of an available liver. The mistake was never realized and the liver was given to another patient. The 59 year-old woman later died from complications caused by non-alcoholic cirrhosis on Thanksgiving day.
“It’s just unreal. She had been seen by a dozen doctors,” Dorothy Roy, her sister, told WUSA9. “Everyone knew she was at Georgetown. How did this happen that they called her at home?”
Frankie Renee Kennedy, a Maryland resident, stole $86,286 from the Georgetown Transplant Institute from 2005 to 2009. Kennedy worked at the Institute from 1998 until this year, where she was responsible for “day-to-day operations.”
According to WUSA9, Kennedy wrote 69 checks to herself using the non-profit’s bank account, signing each check with a doctor’s signature stamp. She attempted to hide her involvement by falsely attributing the money to foundation purposes in the checks’ memo lines.
Kennedy, who faces a maximum of 10 years in prison, will repay the monies to the hospital as a part of her plea bargain. She will be sentenced in February.
The reports on quality of care [PDF] and patient satisfaction [PDF] may rank our favorite non-voting American entity as dead last, but when ranked as a metropolitan area, D.C. fares significantly better: 32nd in cardiac care, 40th in orthopedic care, 19th in neurological care, 37th in cancer care, 32nd in pulmonary care, and 42nd in overall hospital care.
CareChex’s complied the rankings using a variety of public databases, including the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Studies’ Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems database and the Health Quality Alliance’s Hospital Compare All Pay database.
If you’re looking for a bit of consolation, the Georgetown University Medical Center was ranked 13th in specialty areas by a 2001 US News and World Report‘s “Best Hospitals” issue, and was awarded magnet status by the American Nurses Credentialing Center back in 2004.
Dr. Matthew Levy, an associate professor of general pediatrics at Georgetown’s School of Medicine, was recently chosen to join a federal health policy program funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and supported by the Institute of Medicine.
Levy, who also serves as the medical director of community pediatrics at GU Medical Center, will spend a year working with the White House and Congress, advising officials on health care policy.
“I hope to bring to Capitol Hill all the experience I have gained working at Georgetown and provide an understanding of the real challenges our children and families face in reaching care and achieving better health,” Levy said in a press release.
During his time at Georgetown, Levy has established multiple programs aimed towards improving access to health care for high-risk children, including the KIDS mobile medical clinic, a medical student-staffed clinic based out of a homeless shelter, and a community-oriented mental health program.
Joshua Prince, a suspect who allegedly fired a rifle at his ex-girlfriend in a Bethesda parking garage, surrendered himself to Pennsylvania State Police on Tuesday.
Early Tuesday morning, as his ex-girlfriend walked to her car, Prince allegedly fired a shot from a “high-powered rifle” at her. The couple has recently broke up; Prince’s ex-girlfriend had previously filed a protection order against him.
Prince’s surrender came after a day-long manhunt that locked down schools in Maryland and Pennsylvania.
12 p.m. update: In an e-mail to Vox, Worley directed our questions to the Montgomery County Police Department.
According to the Washington Post, Georgetown University Hospital suspended work in its molecular diagnostics laboratory after two women were incorrectly told that they did not have an aggressive form of breast cancer known as HER2.
The lab’s temporary closure comes at the end of a string of alleged improper testing procedures that began in May 2009, says the Post.
In January 2010, after the lab failed an examination of its HER2 test procedures, an unnamed employee suggested that her supervisors notify patients and re-test tissue samples. The employee alleged that her supervisors, including lab director Dan Hartmann, failed to act for four months, so she filed an official complaint to hospital administrators in April.
Vox Populi is the staff blog of the Georgetown Voice, Georgetown University's weekly newsmagazine. Opinions expressed in posts are those of their author alone unless otherwise stated.
An accident at Georgetown’s on-campus heating and cooling plant left one man injured and multiple buildings without power this morning.
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