An investigation has revealed that All Children’s Hospital’s child death rate tripled between 2015 and 2017, following the hospital’s acquisition by Johns Hopkins in 2011.

On Nov. 28, 2018, the Tampa Bay Times broke their story investigating John Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg, Florida. Over the course of a year, the Times investigated the All Children’s Heart Institute, the section of the hospital responsible for performing pediatric heart surgeries and caring for children with heart conditions. Their alleged findings are shocking.

The Times reports that the surgeons at All Children’s made frequent, serious, and unusual mistakes. They reportedly lost needles inside of babies’ chests during surgery on multiple occasions. Patients were prone to developing infections after routine procedures. Stitches holding transplanted hearts in place would rip, causing horrific complications.

Simple procedures would fail and patients would die, the report says. According to interviews with families of patients, All Children’s cardiology doctors would withhold information about these alarming incidents. One family says they didn’t know that their daughter had contracted post-surgery pneumonia until they read her autopsy.

All Children’s has not disputed these claims, though they claim to have halted all pediatric heart surgeries and plan to conduct a review of their program.

According to a statement released earlier this month, the hospital stated, “Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital is defined by our commitment to patient safety and providing the highest quality care possible to the children and families we serve. An important part of that commitment is a willingness to learn.”

According to interviews conducted in April and May of this year with CEO Dr. Jonathan Ellen, All Children’s had already slowed down their surgeries at that point. For most of 2017, the hospital had been only performing low-complexity procedures. However, according to the Times’ research, All Children’s low-complexity procedures were still resulting in disasters.

The Times’ research claims that patients who underwent heart surgery at All Children’s cardiology center in 2017 were three times as likely to die as patients at other hospitals in Florida.

All Children’s patients were reportedly four times more likely to require a machine to pump their blood or breathe for them after surgery. They were five times more likely to have their surgical wounds split open, and three times more likely to become septic after infection. It also took All Children’s patients twice as long to recover after procedures, the report says. In a year and a half, 11 patients at All Children’s cardiology center died, making the 2017 death rate the highest of any Florida pediatric heart center in the past decade.

Several parents spoke with the Times about the tragic results of their children’s surgeries at the All Children’s cardiology center. These families claim that their children suffered strokes, infections, and sepsis at the hands of the pediatric heart surgeons who were supposed to save them.

One woman recounted a conversation she had had with another mother at the hospital, saying, “Somebody has to do something, because they are killing our children.”