The consequences for a Miami doctor accused of malpractice in a Jackson patient’s death
The state Board of Medicine ordered a Miami doctor to pay $5,920.45 and attend three hours of continuing medical education after examining a Florida Department of Health complaint concerning a heart surgery patient’s death.
There also will be a letter of concern issued by the Board of Medicine to Dr. John Sciarra, according to the final order, which came down Thursday.
According to Sciarra’s online Florida Department of Health profile, this is the first disciplinary action against the anesthesiologist since he became licensed in 1997. Sciarra’s profile says his official address is Larkin Community Hospital in South Miami and he has staff privileges at University of Miami hospitals and clinics.
The fatality occurred at Jackson Memorial Hospital, as described in the administrative complaint. The final order says Sciarra was represented by attorney June Hoffman and “the facts are not in dispute.”
From the administrative complaint, previously described in a May 2021 Miami Herald story:
Heart surgery on 57-year-old man “P.S.” went fine on Jan. 18,2018, but during transfer from the operating room to the bed, “the patient’s ventilation machine was disconnected from the circuit.”
The complaint said Sciarra should’ve prevented the problem and, when it happened, recognized the problem so that P.S. “wasn’t well-ventilated for two to nine minutes.”
This caused a slowed heart rate followed by cardiac arrest. The cut in the sternum used for the surgery was reopened for a cardiac massage, during which the right ventricle was punctured. P.S. was put on a cardio pulmonary pump, then taken to intensive care on extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, then diagnosed as brain dead. P.S. died on Jan. 23, 2019.
The final order said mitigating factors in Sciarra’s discipline were:
▪ “Not all the vents surrounding the circumstances that are the subject of this disciplinary action” were within Sciarra’s control.
▪ “The patient’s death was, at least in part, caused by a system error.”
▪ Sciarra “voluntarily participated in a root cause analysis subsequent to the vent that lead to this disciplinary action.”
