Asheville, Western North Carolina’s only clinic that meets the standards of an ambulatory surgical center, FemCare, violated 24 safety violations which was discovered in a recent inspection led the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) to suspend its license.
The recent passage of a controversial abortion bill placed FemCare in the limelight. The bill is believed to have the power to close all clinics in the state except FemCare if DHHSimposes standards similar to those of an outpatient surgical center.
However, state officials said that Femcare’s license suspension was unrelated to the new bill.
During a routine inspection, "egregious violations of existing rules that revealed an imminent threat to the health and safety of patients" were found, stated in a statement from DHHS office on Wednesday.
Director of DHHS’ Division on Health Services Regulation, said in a statement, "We take rule violations very seriously and, when necessary, take firm action to prevent harm to patients and clients in the facilities that we license, regulate and inspect.”
On Wednesday, Dr. Lorraine Cummings issued the following statement on behalf of Femcare Inc.:
"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.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,” said Cummings in an interview with the Asheville Citizen Times.
Ricky Diaz, spokesman of DHHS said on Wednesday, “FemCare is the third surgical abortion provider in the state to be closed since May. A Charlotte clinic that was shut down earlier this year is back open, and a clinic in Durham shut down in June is still closed.”
“The last closing of an abortion clinic before this year was in 2007,” Diaz added.
