star-telegram.com: Dave Lieber

The Watchdog: Texans in dark about hospital infections

Sun, 11 May 2008 06:56 CDT

By Dave Lieber

Your mother enters the hospital for knee-replacement surgery. Two weeks later, she's readmitted, but this time, she has to be hooked up to a ventilator because a hospital-acquired infection, resistant to antibiotics, has entered her bloodstream. She could die.

Your best friend has successful cancer surgery. But while recovering, he catches a "superbug" when drug-resistant bacteria enter his body through a urinary catheter. He has high fever and a redness near the incisions. When his lungs shut down, he deteriorates quickly and goes on a ventilator. He spends weeks in the hospital with the cost ballooning.

An estimated 2 million Americans annually get one of a variety of drug-resistant infections, leading to about 90,000 deaths, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate.

Of those afflicted, 87 percent catch the infection at a healthcare facility, the CDC says.

But those are only estimates. Because there is no nationwide or even state-by-state database, nobody knows for sure how many people are infected, where they got infected and which healthcare facilities have the worst infection rates.

"There's a lot of denial among hospital administrations" about hospital infection rates, said a superbug expert, Dr. Jon Lloyd.

Ideally, your mother or your friend could shop around before surgery for hospitals with low infection rates, maybe by visiting a Web site with hospital statistics.

But Texas consumers will have to wait for the vital information.

The Texas Legislature approved a bill last session to create a state Infection Reporting System.

Lawmakers just didn't provide any money for it.

So Texas hospitals are still not required to keep statistics or report them to the state.

The system, which was supposed to launch June 1, would collect data on surgical-site infections, certain bloodstream infections and respiratory infections that often lead to pneumonia. The information would eventually be made public on the Internet.

But officials estimate that they need $1 million to get the system going. Although a committee is talking about the kinds of data hospitals should collect and how they should report it, the program's fate is unknown.

"Might not even have reporting by the end of the year," said Jeff Taylor, manager of infectious disease surveillance at the State Health Services Department.

Sen. Jane Nelson, R-Flower Mound, who sponsored the bill establishing the system, said that in the 2009 session, she will pick up the fight to find funding.

"If I were queen, there would be money in this budget to have that system up and running," she said. "Unfortunately, some members believed that a major agency devoted to public health could implement this legislation with existing resources.

"Once we have a recommendation from the agency on a system to build and we know the actual costs, I will immediately start pressing for funding."

MRSA

Texas lawmakers passed another infections-related bill last year. It creates a one-year pilot program in three urban areas to collect information about one of the best-known infections -- methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, a superbug that can resist antibiotics.

MRSA causes about 19,000 deaths a year nationwide.

Store loses customer over $4 and an apology

Fri, 09 May 2008 04:35 CDT

By DAVE LIEBER

Jeff just snapped. That's not like him. He works in social services and has compassion for people. He understands that people make mistakes, and he believes in a second chance, even a third.

But every so often, something gets his dander up.

This time, it was a $4 mistake.

"The amount is irrelevant," Jeff said. "It will barely buy you a gallon of gas."

But then he said something that The Watchdog hears time and again about companies that owe their customers small amounts of money: It's not the money; it's the principle.

"The problem is that nobody was willing to take responsibility for the problem and apologize for the error," Jeff said. (He asked that I not use his full name because he's looking for a new job and doesn't want prospective employers to think he's loco.)

In December, Jeff was charged $90 for a service. But as he stood before the cashier, he saw that the invoice was totaled incorrectly. He was being overcharged by $4.

He asked the cashier. She fetched the manager. The manager assured him the total was correct.

So he paid the bill and left the store. But the overcharge hung over him like a dark cloud.

A few days later, he went back to the store and asked that the bill be corrected.

He was rebuffed again.

At some point, desire can become obsession, and that's what happened here.

He went back a third time to ask for his $4. He got the same answer.

Most people would give up. Not Jeff, apparently a true member of The Watchdog Nation.

On the fourth visit, he recalled, "I took a printout with my own math to show them in black and white that the amount was wrong."

OK! Uncle! The manager had had enough of this guy. He handed Jeff four bucks, probably expecting the matter to go away forever.

He didn't know jack, er, Jeff.

Jeff sent a letter of complaint by certified mail to the business's supervisor and another to the business's local owner. He told them what happened.

Neither bothered to reply.

So he took it up the next notch: He wrote to the corporation whose name is on the store's front door. His reply? A voice-mail message from a woman at headquarters telling him to expect a call from the business's supervisor.

IF THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND, SPEAK UP

Sun, 04 May 2008 04:39 CDT

By DAVE LIEBER

In late March, Beth Earle came home to the sound of bulldozers near her horse barn.

She knew that the city of Keller was building a playground and park in the Overton Ridge subdivision that abuts her property.

But when she got closer, she saw that the bulldozer operators had missed the property line, she says, by a good 20 feet or more.

They swiped through the western edge of her property, where a stand of mature live oaks buffered her 12-acre horse farm from the subdivision. Trees were being knocked down like pins at a bowling alley.

"Please stop!" she told one man atop a bulldozer. "This is my property."

He said he didn't speak English.

She wrote him a note to stop. He wouldn't stop.

She asked who his boss was, if his boss had a phone number.

He didn't understand. He kept bulldozing. Taking out more trees. It was excruciating.

She contacted the city, but that didn't go well. A city representative visited and explained that she could replace some of the loss with "vegetation."

"They offered a few bushes," she recalled. "That's not my idea of compensation." (The city employee who made the offer didn't return The Watchdog's call.)

Earle called an expert who told her the value of property-line trees -- $70,000 or more. Real estate people told her that the total property value dropped about $100,000 because of the loss of privacy.

The house on Roanoke Road, once owned by WFAA/Channel 8 sports anchor Dale Hansen, is a legend in the Keller neighborhood. Hansen lived there in the 1980s and '90s, and he recalls hosting parties where Jerry Jones, Jimmy Johnson and Troy Aikman lounged around his swimming pool, the most famous part of which is the underground grotto.

Hansen moved to Waxahachie when the nearby subdivision was under construction.

"We wanted some space in the country, and we had it for the longest time," he recalled the other day. Then the subdivision came, and the country feeling was lost.

What little was left came from that stand of live oaks. Thanks to it, from the house, you saw trees.

Now, for the first time, you see rooftops.

The property is for sale. It includes the underground grotto, a sports court, a barn, stables, horse pastures and many surviving trees. Earle says she is heading toward divorce and raising six children. Her only asset is the money she gets for the house. The city's error makes her situation worse, she said.

Before she contacted The Watchdog, she believed that she would need a lawyer because she had never fought city hall before. But she couldn't find one who would take the case without a hefty retainer.

Earle didn't know that, on her own, she can file a claim with the city seeking restitution.

Watchdog: Funeral homes to take the hit after pre-need firm fails

Fri, 02 May 2008 10:40 CDT

By DAVE LIEBER

Funeral directors are the ones most likely to get hurt because one of the largest sellers of pre-need funeral contracts has been forced by several states, including Texas, to stop selling policies, Texas regulators say.

About 39,000 Texas policyholders who bought insurance contracts sold by two Texas-based companies affiliated with National Prearranged Services of St. Louis should still get their funeral expenses paid. But some of the costs will have to come from the funeral homes and not the policy underwriter, regulators say.

That's good news for the 39,000 customers, but terrible news for 650 Texas funeral homes that agreed to service the NPS contracts.

Why? Because the pre-need contracts were supposed to have a built-in "growth factor" that allowed the buyers' original investments to keep up with inflation.

But because of NPS' financial failure, its contracts now are worth only their original face value. This means that funeral homes will have to cover the difference in expenses down the road when costs are higher.

First report

The Watchdog's report last month about NPS' deteriorating financial condition was the first to appear in a U.S. daily newspaper. Since then, I've learned more about the cause of NPS' failure through interviews with regulators, funeral industry sources and also through information I got after making an open records request of the Texas Banking Department.

Here's what appears to have happened: NPS used money it made from funeral contracts to buy whole life insurance policies, but eventually the company decided to convert these whole life policies into term life policies. This gave the company money upfront because it could borrow money based on the policy. But eventually more money was required to cover the cost of ballooning payments for the term life policies.

Because NPS is affiliated with the insurance companies involved, NPS often stopped making payments on the term life policies. Account holders, who continued making regular payments to NPS as part of their contracts, had no idea that payments on their policies had ceased.

When a policyholder died, NPS rushed to make enough payments to catch up and cover the cost of the funeral.

Officials at NPS and the two insurance companies have not returned calls to The Watchdog.

States take action

Funeral Service Insider, a newsletter that serves the funeral industry, reported last month that as NPS' financial problems began to mount, the company had difficulty making good on tens of thousands of policies nationwide.

The newsletter also reported that nobody was sure where all the money, probably totaling tens of millions of dollars, has gone.

Funeral directors realized that something was wrong with NPS when they received a letter in late December telling them that the company no longer intended to pay more than the original face value of a policy. At the time, investigators in several states were looking at NPS and its insurance companies and learning about the company's precarious financial condition.

In March and April, Texas regulators took strong action against the companies, forcing them to stop selling new policies. Other states, following Texas' lead, quickly followed.

NPS is still in business, but it has dismissed employees, including most of its sales staff, and is no longer writing contracts, regulators and others say. No one has charged the company or its two affiliated Texas-based insurance companies -- Lincoln Memorial Life Insurance and Memorial Service Life Insurance -- with any wrongdoing.

But one upshot is that funeral directors who were used to getting reimbursed by NPS for funerals within 24 hours now must wait about two months.

What you can do

What are sound alternatives for consumers? Put money for a funeral in a separate savings account or place it as an investment in a trust under the buyer's name.

Watchdog: Trying to make heads of tails of coin prices

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 05:54 CDT

By DAVE LIEBER

The first thing I saw in the advertisement was, "Free coins are being handed out ..."

Ahh. I love the thought of free money.

So I read the ad in Parade magazine, which is distributed in the Sunday Star-Telegram. Sounded like a great deal. Buy a roll of new presidential dollar coins and get a free $1 coin with it.

The commemorative coins come wrapped in plastic "vault tubes" designed to protect them from harm. For an extra cost, the tubes can be tucked inside gold foil "vault bricks" for safe storage.

The seller is World Reserve Monetary Exchange. That name sounds as if the group could be related to the Federal Reserve Bank. But World Reserve states in its ad that it is "not affiliated with the United States government or any government agency."

The ad said the offer was good only for 72 hours. "You can show them off like a diamond ring or a brand new car. You just won't believe the expression on people's faces when you hand them one of these," the ad says.

So I called the toll-free number before the 72 hours were up.

The call center employee told me that the new presidential dollar coins, which arrived last year and will be printed every year until 2016, are already increasing in value.

He offered to sell me four rolls and toss in a fifth roll and five additional coins for free so I wouldn't have to break open the vault tubes when I wanted to show them off.

"How many coins in a roll?" I asked.

"Fifty," he said.

I did the math: 255 coins worth $255 without the fancy wrapping.

"How much?" I asked.

"$496 plus shipping."

"How much with shipping?"

"Total is $543."

Remember, this is for $255 worth of coins.

Hmm.

He offered me a smaller package: 51 dollar coins for $135.

When I thanked him and prepared to hang up, he reminded me that the 72-hour deadline was approaching.

Reader offers a pointed explanation

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 04:36 CDT

By DAVE LIEBER

At least one Watchdog mystery may be solved, thanks to alert reader Steve Hammack of Stephenville.

How did a needle get into Pattie Davis' store-bought beef cutlets?

When she took a bite, the needle punctured her left cheek. Davis, of Hawkins, thought it was a sewing needle.

Watchdog reported this on April 6 in a column about foreign objects in food. (Read it at star-telegram.com/watchdog).

Hammack wrote that more likely it was "the remains of a vaccination needle which broke off during intramuscular injection of a vaccine."

"Such needles, especially of a narrow gauge that might be used on a young calf, sometimes break in this manner," he wrote.

Hammack, a retired professor and a beef cattle specialist at the Texas A&M Research and Extension Center in Stephenville, said the vaccinators sometimes know when the needle breaks. Removal requires surgery.

Turns out this is an ongoing problem.

Ronald Gill, another livestock specialist at the A&M center, says that needles rarely break but that the beef industry is trying to police itself to take care of the problem when it happens.

The guidelines of the Texas Beef Quality Provider Program, which is led by the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association, Texas Beef Council and Texas Cooperative Extensionelf-enforcement, state: "Under no circumstances can animals carrying broken needles be sold or sent to a packer. Animals should be restrained so if a needle breaks, they can't easily return to the herd. Veterinarians should remove the needle, or the animal should never be sold or allowed to leave the ranch."

Saline solution test

Readers were left with a question after reading the April 13 Watchdog report about a national study involving patients taken in ambulances to John Peter Smith and Harris Methodist Fort Worth hospitals.

Researchers are testing a hypertonic saline solution, slightly more concentrated than blood, on trauma victims who have lost blood or suffered life-threatening injuries. The study is double-blind; that is, neither the patient nor the paramedic knows which solution is being used.

The government has approved unusual rules for the study. If you don't want to participate in the study -- that is, if you want to be given regular saline solution in the event you become a trauma patient --you have to request and then wear a white bracelet for the next year or so.

The bracelet alerts paramedics to give you the regular solution.

Readers asked: If the study is double-blind, how could a white bracelet protect the patient from getting the test fluid? The fluids are coded so the paramedic can't tell them apart. How does the paramedic know which one not to use?

Dr. George Sapko, leader of the national study, told me that a supply of regular saline solution is kept separately and is specially marked for quick access for people wearing white "opt-out" bracelets. Objectors get the usual care without being part of the experiment.

To get a bracelet and not participate, write to roc@utsouthwestern.edu or call 214-648-6726.

DirecTV leases

Thanks to alert reader Martin Cooney of Haltom City for informing me about a class-action lawsuit filed in February against DirecTV.

Watchdog: A foreign object in food? Complain!

Sun, 06 Apr 2008 06:10 CDT

By DAVE LIEBER

In recent weeks, readers have alerted The Watchdog to foreign objects they say they found in foods.

Each reader asked what he or she was supposed to do. Below, you can read what I found out.

But first, the complaints.

Hershel Blackshear of Fort Worth bought a pack of Bump bubble gum at a Raceway gas station. When her daughter, Janireka, 15, bit into a piece, her mother says, she chomped down on a half-inch screw and fractured a molar. Her daughter lost a permanent tooth when it was extracted.

A listed phone number for the makers of the gum, Sajidah Candies of Duncanville, rang without anyone answering.

Pattie Davis of Hawkins bought beef cutlets from a Brookshire's grocery store.

"I took a small bite from the steak that I was cooking, and when I bit down on it, I felt something metal," she says. "I pulled out a sewing needle. It put a small puncture on my left cheek."

Sam Anderson, a spokesman for Brookshire Grocery Co., said that Davis' complaint is under investigation but that health inspectors who followed up found no violations.

Heather FitzGerald of Azle bought a box of Caramel deLites Girl Scout cookies. "My daughter pulled one from the package that had a long black hair baked into it," she says. "It went in one side, under the chocolate, out the other, and dangled from both ends. Quite disgusting to say the least."

She engaged in lengthy e-mail correspondence with the cookie's manufacturer, ABC Cookie Bakers, which she shared with The Watchdog. The company stressed its commitment to quality and sent FitzGerald a free carton of Peanut Butter Patties. Michelle Tompkins, a spokeswoman for Girl Scouts of the USA, apologized. "Each year we audit the baker for quality assurance purposes, and we'll make sure we get to the bottom of this," she said.

Ellen Russell of Fort Worth ate a bowl of Quaker Simple Harvest oatmeal with pecans and noticed that one pecan looked different from the others. Turns out it was a maggot. "Not a good way to start the day," she says.

She contacted the company, which apologized and sent her coupons.

Quaker spokeswoman Jamie Stein tells me the company investigated and discovered that the product was past its sell-by date listed on the container. "Perhaps it sat on the store shelf for some time," Stein says. "Infestations can and do sometimes occur. This appears to be an isolated situation."

Sharon Hunter of Fort Worth bought a jug of Oak Farms orange punch. She says she and her son drank it, developed diarrhea and nausea and went to the hospital. There was mold in the punch, they say.

The orange drink is made by Dean Foods of Dallas, where spokeswoman Marguerite Copel says: "We take these things very seriously. We'll look into it."

What to do

When you have a concern about tainted foods, saving the product and object found is the vital first step.

Step two is to notify the retailer or manufacturer, as these five readers did - or tried to do. But manufacturers and retail outlets may be skeptical. Many remember the California woman who declared that she bit into a finger while eating chili at a Wendy's. Turns out, she planted the finger herself in hope of winning a lucrative lawsuit.

You can file a complaint with county, state and federal government agencies that are supposed to search for patterns and help protect consumers. But you may face some hurdles there as well.

In Tarrant County, consumers can go to the Public Health Department. Environmental health manager David Jefferson said the department's challenge is to investigate the complaint's validity. The county usually refers these matters to state and federal agencies, he said.

Watchdog: Internet turns Rowlett mom's e-mail into a national concern - and a hoax

Sun, 20 Apr 2008 05:46 CDT

By DAVE LIEBER

For a week, she was one of the most famous mothers in the state, possibly the nation. People everywhere knew her name, the company where she works, what she writes about and cares about.

It was attention she hated.

It all started when she received an e-mail from another mother about a little dust-up in late March not far from her house in Rowlett. Some teenagers were in cars, and the cars had bumped on the road.

The mother took the e-mail, added a few comments of her own, put her name and company on the bottom, and forwarded it to an e-mail group she calls "the Mommy network."

Somehow, though, that e-mail left the Mommy network and shot across the Internet stratosphere. People read it by the thousands. Some called her to talk about it. The police called her, too. She was quite easy to find. There, on the bottom of each e-mail are her name and company.

When I called the company and asked for her, I was quickly connected to her desk.

She won't let me share her name, mostly because she's too embarrassed by the attention. But actually, it's already too late for Mrs. X, as I'll call her.

I sent my version of the e-mail (a friend sent it to my wife, who sent it to me) back to Mrs. X so she could see what the Internet hath wrought.

She recognized only about half of it. Somebody had added a few things. Other portions were deleted. But she was still listed as the author.

The e-mail states:

"New gang initiation ... They bump your car. You stop; they shoot you. This started last night (3/26/2008). Warn your family and friends. Letters are being passed out today in North Dallas schools."

The next paragraph quotes Mrs. X's original contact but makes it look as if Mrs. X writes it: "OMG! This happened to my 16 year old last night. She was followed closely, honked at and bumped all the way from the Firewheel mall area into our Rowlett neighborhood. She was hysterical when she got home."

The note is signed by Mrs. X, who, by the way, doesn't have a daughter. But facts aren't getting in the way of this. "There has been so much hoopla," she says.

As the e-mail spread, people grew concerned. The Rowlett and Garland police departments received calls from the public asking for information. Both departments investigated the e-mail's origins and the "facts" contained in it.

Garland police say they found a female whose car was bumped. But it wasn't serious, and the incident was never reported. When police learned the details, they quickly determined that it wasn't gang-related.

"Myth," a Garland police spokesman said. "There never was any stop. There never was a gun pulled."

Rowlett police say they looked in their city logs for incidents that could be related and found nothing that matches.

But it doesn't matter.

Snopes.com, the authoritative Web site on urban legends, reports that a new version of the legendary gang "car bump" story emerged in e-mails -- nationally -- on March 26, the same date cited in the Mrs. X e-mail.

This is an oldie but goody: Gang "initiates would be randomly choosing innocent victims and gunning them down as a way of gaining entry into gangs," Snopes writes.

How not to treat your customers

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 07:28 CDT

By DAVE LIEBER

You don't really want a Watchdog intervention -- not if you are corporate America, and you have what you dare to call a customer relations department.

The definition of a Watchdog intervention? When your service is so bad that customers have to call in a newspaper columnist to rescue them. That's pretty bad.

Today's list of Watchdog interventions represents situations that companies should have handled correctly the first time. But they dragged on and on and on.

Can you hear me now?

Ralph and Sandra Weinbaum of Azle got stuck with a $90 electrician's bill that they thought Verizon should pay.

Verizon insisted that the phone problems were on the family's end, not Verizon's.

They were wrong. After the Weinbaums hired the electrician to check their phone jacks, they contacted Verizon with proof that the jacks were fine. Verizon was messing up. The family asked Verizon for $90.

The response? "It's aggravating to have a large company just ignore your communication," Ralph Weinbaum said.

The Texas Public Utility Commission wasn't interested either. But The Watchdog was.

After the intervention, Verizon's customer relations representatives told the Weinbaums that they would credit their account $123 -- $90 for the electrician and $25 for a service performance guarantee plus tax.

Suddenly, Weinbaum said, "They were very responsive."

Misquoted

Karen Walters of Fort Worth said she was quoted $90 for specific services from Charter Communications. But the first month's bill came in at $177. When she complained, she was told that the original numbers were wrong, and her bill was correct.

"I told them I was going to call the attorney general's office and report them for false advertising. Didn't seem to faze them."

Intervention time.

After that, Walters said, "They were extremely polite to me and very respectful. It is just a shame that the people who you speak to at first are not!"

The end result. She is paying $85 plus taxes and fees for cable, wireless Internet and telephone services.

Cleaning up Fort Worth

For months, Barbara York of Fort Worth endured the sight of bare branches in her yard and on the fence and hanging from trees and wires. They were left by a company that strung nearby cable.

Charter acknowledged the problem and assured her that someone would clean up. But nobody ever did.

Watchdog: Some oil-change businesses are still getting mileage out of myth

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 05:57 CDT

By DAVE LIEBER

"Need an oil change?" the man at the Arlington oil-change business asked me.

I told him it had been 8,000 miles since my Honda's last one.

"OK," he said. "Would you like a good synthetic oil like Pennzoil Platinum? Or we got Royal Purple. It's about $64, but you pay for two oil changes at once, you know. You can go 6,000 miles on it. It helps with gas by letting your engine run cooler. I mean, it's pretty good oil."

I asked how often the oil should be changed.

"We recommend 3,000 miles, because if you go beyond 3,000, you start getting sludge because conventional oil breaks down," the shop manager told me.

That pitch makes sense to many people, who have been on that 3,000-mile schedule since they first got behind the wheel.

And some lube shops are only too happy to perpetuate the notion. My preferred oil changer gives me a window sticker urging me to come back every 3,000 miles.

But car manufacturers -- and even the American Petroleum Institute, which has what you might agree is a vested interest in selling oil -- say changing oil that often is unnecessary.

When I showed the manager that the owner's manual for my car recommended an oil change every 10,000 miles, he said, "We base it off API ratings -- 3,000 miles for the average, everyday driver."

I told the manager that I was The Watchdog columnist for the Star-Telegram. I told him I was checking out a complaint about the shop's recommendations. That didn't deter him. He mentioned several more times that the API recommended an oil change every 3,000 miles. Indeed, he built his entire sales pitch around that recommendation.

A few hours later, I called API, the main trade association for the oil and gas industry, and asked about that recommendation.

Kevin Ferrick, manager of API engine oil licensing, laughed and said:

"The 3,000-mile thing? I'm not really sure where it came from. Whatever that lube center is saying, if they're saying API has a recommended 3,000-mile interval, they're wrong. We don't have a recommended interval."

He recommended that drivers check their owner's manual.

For my Honda, 10,000 miles is appropriate for normal driving conditions, Honda spokesman Chris Martin said.

For severe driving conditions, he added, 5,000 miles might be more appropriate. Severe driving conditions include temperatures higher than 90 degrees, regular trips of less than five miles, excessive idling or stop-and-go traffic.

Newer Hondas have a "maintenance minder" that alerts drivers with a dashboard light when an oil change is needed. The indicator is based on the oil's condition, he said.

"That's something the after-market repair shops are not going to like at all," he said.

That's the same message I heard from General Motors spokesman Tom Henderson when I asked about the company's recommendations.

The average oil-change interval for a GM vehicle is 8,500 miles, Henderson said.