Kanawha County health officials have sent letters to patients who might have been exposed to infectious diseases because of unsafe injection practice

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Kanawha County health officials have sent letters to 110 patients who might have been exposed to infectious diseases because of unsafe injection practices at a local pain clinic.
Local health officials and officials for the federal Centers for Disease Control began the investigation last month after six people who were injected at the Kanawha City clinic came down with staphylococcus infections, according to a statement issued Friday by the Kanawha-Charleston Health Department.
Two more probable cases of staph infections also were found. Some of the patients had to be hospitalized because of the infections, but all have recovered.
As a result, health officials sent letters to 110 other patients who got shots at the clinic between April 27 and May 13.
Sources familiar with the investigation said the doctor involved is Dr. J.K. Lilly at Appalachian Pain Therapy on MacCorkle Avenue in Kanawha City.
"I am cooperating fully with all parties involved," Lilly said when contacted Friday.
Dr. Rahul Gupta, chief health officer for the health department, said there was a very small chance the patients might have been exposed to hepatitis or the HIV virus because of improper injection techniques at the office.
"We probably will not know for months to come" whether anyone gets hepatitis or HIV, Gupta said.
Gupta said investigators found that a doctor apparently did not follow correct protocol in giving injections at the clinic, leading to "significant infection control breaches" at the facility.
Gupta said that because of confidentiality constraints, he would not identify the doctor or the medical practice.
"The people who needed to be notified have been notified," he said.
According to information kept by the West Virginia Board of Medicine, Lilly was publicly reprimanded in 2005 for allowing a 10-year-old boy to watch a medical procedure without the patient's consent. Board of Medicine records also show that Lilly was the subject of three medical malpractice actions, but two were dismissed.
Reach Rusty Marks at rustyma...@wvgazette.com">rustyma...@wvgazette.com or 304-348-1215.



HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM Maybe we should monitor these clinics BEFORE they perform unsafe practices????? We are looking at spending millions to do a healcare reform, how about reforming how the healcare system is monitored and saving patients themselves a large sum of money from having to recieve continued medical care due to malpractice?

Recently I was very ill myself. I visited the hospital where they immediately prescribed me the popular antibiotic "Bactrim". Rather than my infection getting better, it got worse. So much so that it had spread through other areas of my body.

I set off to my family doctor who performed a compatability test. Basically he told me that the infection that I had was resistent to the popular drug "Bactrim". Now if the hospital themselves would have performed this simpled quick test before prescribing me a drug that would not work, I would not have ended up recieving not only more medical care with my family physician but now more tests run at the hospital to see just how far the infection had spread and not to mention more prescription drugs.

Just think of how much money our health care sytem and patients would save if they "got it right " the first time.