(Providence, RI) -- Rhode Island Hospital has been fined 150-thousand dollars after the health department determined a surgical team violated safety policies.

The surgical team apparently failed to properly mark the patient's fingers and ended up operating on the wrong finger on October 22nd.

They disregarded the rules for "time out," which is a pause before surgery to verify that the patient, procedure and site, are correct.

This is the fifth such wrong-site surgery at RIH since January 2007.

In the October incident, a surgeon performed two procedures on two parts of the patient's middle finger, when in fact he was supposed to perform one procedure on the middle finger and the other on the pinky finger.

Once the error was noticed, he notified the family, who consented to the pinky finger operation, and the operating team went to work again without the required "time out."

An order imposed on the hospital yesterday by the health department reprimanded RIH and mandated observation of every surgery for a year, required full adoption of the statewide surgical protocol adopted in July of this year and imposed the fine.

This is only the second time the hospital has been fined by the state.

The first time was in 2007 when RIH was fined 50-thousand dollars for the third wrong-site neurosurgery that year.

　

(Copyright 2009 by VERTEXNews/Newsroom Solutions)