The horrifying medication mix-up at Ascension Saint Thomas Hospital Midtown was already difficult to comprehend: Four people walked into a Nashville hospital for routine joint-replacement procedures and received potassium phosphate instead of the anesthetic mepivacaine.
All four suffered adverse reactions, and at least two were reportedly left paralyzed.
But now the story is beginning to raise a much larger and more disturbing question.
Was this really an isolated catastrophe — or is something fundamentally wrong with the system surrounding patient care at the hospital?