State health officials have launched an investigation of how someone was able to kidnap a baby boy from the nursery at Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood.
Even within the hospital industry, security experts on Thursday were criticizing the explanations offered by Loyola executives, saying the medical center was relying too heavily on the electronic system that failed.
A team of three inspectors visited the hospital Wednesday and Thursday to assess what policies and practices led to the abduction of 13-day-old Zquan Wakefield, said Tom Schafer, a spokesman for the Illinois Department of Public Health.
Zquan died hours later of asphyxiation, after a woman allegedly tried to hide the baby from police.
Health investigators hope to finish a report Friday and submit it to federal regulators, who have the authority to withdraw the hospital’s approval for Medicare and Medicaid.
At a news conference late Wednesday, Loyola officials laid blame for the abduction on a faulty set of double-doors that failed to close and lock when a sensor attached to the boy’s ankle set off a security alarm.
“We put technological systems in place so we don’t have to rely on human judgment,” Trisha Cassidy, a senior vice president of Loyola University Health System, said Wednesday.
Hospital security experts criticized that strategy, saying it violates a central tenet of security planners who value staff alertness above all.
“I’m sorry, that’s just wrong,” said John Rabun Jr., vice president and chief operating officer of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in Arlington, Va. “Professional judgment is what’s required in health care. You back it up with electronics.”
Most security experts interviewed agreed with Rabun.
Experts said several aspects of the case reveal a misguided faith in electronics–including a failure to test the alarm-activated doors often enough–and a repetition of mistakes that have led to other hospital abductions across the country.
Most security specialists believe that preventing a nightmare breakdown such as Zquan’s kidnapping and death requires drumming home the point to hospital staff that even the most impressive anti-theft technology has limitations.
“It’s ultimately a human responsibility,” said Richard Stuckey, a Chicago architect specializing in the design of health-care facilities, including maternity wards.
Although Loyola officials held a news conference late Thursday on the technical problem, they declined to comment in detail or respond to critics Thursday, citing a potential lawsuit and pending criminal action against Vanecha Cooper, the woman charged with Zquan’s kidnapping and murder. Their only statement was to clarify the number of staffers on duty in the maternity ward the night of the kidnapping: five nurses, two patient care technicians and one secretary.
Any staff-related failures at Loyola will be a prime focus of lawyers representing Zquan’s mother, Zandra Wakefield. At a news conference Thursday, family attorney James Montgomery said the abduction did involve a human lapse because nursing staff apparently failed to stop Cooper from picking up Zquan.
“When she reached over and took that baby from that crib, they should have been aware that she had no permission to deal with this kid,” said Montgomery, a partner in attorney Johnnie Cochran’s Chicago law firm.
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Experts also found fault with the statement by Cassidy that the security doors had been tested nine days before the abduction.
“That’s just not the way it’s done,” Rabun said. “These things are checked daily. It’s simple. You put a tag in your hand and you walk through the door.”
Such a test would have been especially vital if officials considered the automatic double doors a last line of defense, Rabun said.
Making matters worse, the Loyola maternity ward had been plagued by false alarms during a renovation earlier this year–which made staff respond to alarms with less urgency, former Loyola nurse Cari Loescher said.
Even when automatic doors lock as intended, staffers must respond quickly to prevent a would-be kidnapper’s escape once an alarm sounds, experts said.
That’s because safety doors are designed to reopen after a short delay in case of a fire, according to regulations enforced by the state Public Health Department.
The importance of caution is seen in narratives from the 106 hospital infant abductions Rabun’s group has collected since 1983.
Just last month, Rabun said, a baby was stolen from a medical center in Brooklyn, N.Y., even though alarms went off. The abductor–later captured with the infant unharmed–escaped through an already open security door.
The lessons of Loyola’s tragedy may sink in, Rabun said, because unlike previous hospital abductions, this one ended with a death.