At least one person is dead in a Chester County car accident Thursday morning.
One car was involved in the crash, which happened near Modena Road and Union Street in Coatesville just after 5 a.m., according to reports.
Authorities shut down Modena Road between Union Street and Overhill Road while they investigated.
The road remained closed at 8:30 a.m., more than four hours after the crash occurred.
No word yet on the victim's identity.
A Delaware judge is set to hear arguments in a lawsuit challenging the planned $25 billion merger of cigarette makers Reynolds American Inc. and Lorillard Inc.
The judge was to hear arguments Friday on a motion by plaintiffs who are seeking a preliminary injunction and a motion to expedite the case.
The two companies last week announced that they would hold special shareholder meetings Jan. 28 in North Carolina, where both companies are headquartered, to vote on the merger.
The combination of the two companies would create a formidable competitor for Virginia-based market leader Altria Group, owner of Philip Morris USA.
Reynolds sells Camel, Pall Mall and Natural American Spirit cigarettes. Lorillard's brands include Newport, Maverick and Kent.
Federal regulators are conducting an antitrust review of the deal.
A Delaware County community is reeling following the suicide of one of its children.
A letter was sent out to parents and guardians of students at Paxon Hollow Middle School in Broomall confirming that 12-year-old Skyler Baffa took his own life Thursday.
"This letter is to sadly inform you that a student, Skyler Baffa, passed away on Thursday, December 18," said the letter.
The letter, sent to the school community principal Dr. Steve Subers, was also posted to the Marple Newtown School District's website.
It goes on to emphasize the importance of discussing Skyler's death with their children while making sure to explain that suicide is not "a positive response to life's challenges."
"Please join us in mourning the loss of Skyler, while not glamorizing, and thereby positively reinforcing the method by which he died," read the letter. "We must reinforce positive options our children can employ when life is difficult as well as how they can access these options."
Additional counselors were provided Thursday to help students deal with the loss. The school will continue to provide support for its student body for as long as it's needed, according to the school's website.
Information on loss and suicide was also provided for helping parents deal with their children's grief.
The circumstances surrounding Skyler's suicide are unknown at this time.
"Our thoughts are with the family and friends of Skyler," said Subers.
SUICIDE PREVENTION: If you know someone who needs help, you can contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline by calling 1-800-273-TALK (8255).
Authorities have charged the owner of two dead donkeys that were found dumped off a road in Jackson Township with animal cruelty.
The New Jersey Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals says one donkey was found dead in a paddock at JR Farms and the other was found on the ground barely breathing in early November. The SPCA says the second donkey was euthanized with a gunshot to the head.
The animals' owner said he removed the carcasses to an area near East Veterans Highway and Bennetts Mills Road.
The SPCA says the owner left a pot-bellied pig behind at the farm. He's charged with abandoning a domestic animal.
Authorities have not released the name of the person.
Frontier Airlines is offering discounted airfares for one-day only ahead of the launch of several new non-stop routes between Philadelphia International and seven destinations.
The low-cost rates, some as low as $39 for a one-way flight, are available Friday, the day before the Denver-based airlines starts its new non-stop service between three Florida cities -- Miami, Orlando and Tampa.
On Sunday, Frontiers non-stop route between Philly and Cancun, Mexico begins.
The airline also has plans to add direct flights from Philly to Atlanta, Chicago and Charlotte, North Carolina in spring 2015.
Police in the South Jersey suburb are warning shoppers after at least pickpockets snatched credit cards from at least four people, including one woman who had more than $14,000 charged to her account.
One assailant (pictured top right) stole a woman's wallet while she was eating at a Panera Bread location on Nov. 26, and then racked up more than $14,300 on her credit cards at a Nordstrom's department store and an Apple retail location, police said.
Another pickpocket (pictured top left) put more than $2,300 of Best Buy and Walmart goods on a different victim's credit cards after she stole her wallet on Nov. 5 as the victim shopped in a Wegman's grocery store, investigators said.
A man (pictured top center) stole another victim's wallet on Nov. 20 as the woman dined in a Bahama Breeze restaurant, according to authorities, who added that victim had nearly $770 charged to her credit card at a Macy's department store and a Target store.
The most recent incident, which involved two suspects (pictured bottom), happened Dec. 16 when a woman's wallet was stolen as she shopped at the Christmas Tree Shop, police said. Her cards were used to buy more than $330 in Total Wine store products, investigators said.
Authorities are working to determine if the cases are connected.
Mayor Michael Nutter and Fire Commissioner Derrick Sawyer condemned a Philadelphia Fire Department paramedic for a photograph shared on Instagram that depicted two black men pointing guns at a white police officer.
"I thought it was disgusting," said Sawyer, who added the image violates the fire department's social media policy. "We are a professional organization and I expect my members to act in a professional manner."
"In the strongest possible terms, I condemn the behavior of a paramedic ... who used social media to post a reprehensible message and image that targeted police officers particularly at a time of emotional volatility," Mayor Nutter said.
The message posted with the photo read: "Our real enemy ... Need 2 stop pointing guns at each other and at the ones that's legally killing us and innocents."
The next image posted to the same account said, "There are numerous crooked and corrupted cops (mostly white) & mostly they harass, beat or kill innocents (mostly blacks)."
The posts caused alarm among Philly firefighters, who do not want a fissure to form between themselves and police.
"In this difficult time, I want to assure the members of the Philadelphia Police Department that we are here to support and assist you whenever you may need," said Joe Schulle, president of Local 22, the firefighters and paramedics union. "[We] proudly stand shoulder to shoulder with our brothers in blue. ... We are brothers and sisters in public safety."
Hours after the initial post caught the ire of Philly leaders, the paramedic, who is based out of Medic 23 in southwest Philly, shared an apology on social media.
"That post was out of anger of what is going on around the world (Mike Brown, Eric Garner & Etc.) & past experiences that I've had with police," the post said. "My intention was not to slander or hurt anyone or my brothers in blue. Again I am sorry."
An investigation is underway, and Sawyer said the charged images are unlikely to damage the bond between the Philly's Fire Department and police force.
"We have a pretty strong relationship with the police department," he said. "So one member's mistake is not going to severe those ties."
In its toughest crackdown yet on medical errors, the federal government is cutting payments to 721 hospitals for having high rates of infections and other patient injuries, records released Thursday show.
Medicare assessed these new penalties against some of the most renowned hospitals in the nation, including the Cleveland Clinic, Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and Geisinger Medical Center in Danville, Pa.
One out of every seven hospitals in the nation will have their Medicare payments lowered by 1 percent over the fiscal year that began Oct. 1 and continues through September 2015. The health law mandates the reductions for the quarter of hospitals that Medicare assessed as having the highest rates of “hospital-acquired conditions,” or HACs. These conditions include infections from catheters, blood clots, bed sores and other complications that are considered avoidable.
The penalties, which are estimated to total $373 million, are falling particularly hard on academic medical centers: Roughly half of them will be punished, according to a Kaiser Health News analysis.
Dr. Eric Schneider, a Boston health researcher who has interviewed patient safety experts for his studies, said research has demonstrated that medical errors can be reduced through a number of techniques. But “there’s a pretty strong sense among the experts we talked to that they are not widely implemented,” he said. Those methods include entering physician orders into computers rather than scrawling them on paper, better hand hygiene and checklists on procedures to follow during surgeries. “Too many clinicians fail to use those techniques consistently,” he said.
The penalties come as the hospital industry is showing some success in reducing avoidable errors. A recent federal report found the frequency of mistakes dropped by 17 percent between 2010 and 2013, an improvement U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell called “a big deal, but it’s only a start.” Even with the reduction, one in eight hospital admissions in 2013 included a patient injury, according to the report from the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, or AHRQ.
The new penalties are harsher than any prior government effort to reduce patient harm. Since 2008, Medicare has refused to pay hospitals for the cost of treating patients who suffer avoidable complications. Legally, Medicare can expel a hospital with high rates of errors from its program, but that punishment is almost never done, as it is a financial death sentence for most hospitals. Some states issue their own penalties — California, for instance, levies fines as high as $100,000 per incident on hospitals that are repeat offenders.
The government has also been giving money to some hospitals and quality groups to help improve patient safety efforts.
The HAC program has “put attention to the issue of complications and that attention wasn’t everywhere,” said Dr. John Bulger, Geisinger’s chief quality officer. However, he said hospitals such as his now must spend more time reviewing their Medicare billing records as the government uses those to evaluate patient safety. The penalty program, he said, “has the potential to take the time that could be spent on improvement and making sure the coding is accurate.”
Hospitals complain that the new penalties are arbitrary, since there may be almost no difference between hospitals that are penalized and those that narrowly escape falling into the worst quarter.
“Hospitals may be penalized on things they are getting safer on, and that sends a fairly mixed message,” said Nancy Foster, a quality expert at the American Hospital Association.
Hospital officials also point out those that do the best job identifying infections in patients may end up looking worse than others. “How hard you look for something influences your results,” said Dr. Darrell Campbell Jr., chief medical officer at the University of Michigan Health System. “We have a huge infection control group, one of the largest in the country. I tell them to go out and find it.” Campbell’s hospital had a high rate of urinary tract infections but was not penalized because it had fewer serious complications than most hospitals, records show.
The penalties come on top of other financial incentives Medicare has been placing on hospitals. This year, Medicare has already fined 2,610 hospitals for having too many patients return within a month of discharge. This is the third year those readmission penalties have been assessed. This is also the third year Medicare gave bonuses and penalties based on a variety of quality measures, including death rates and patient appraisals of their care. With the HAC penalties now in place, the worst-performing hospitals this year risk losing more than 5 percent of their regular Medicare reimbursements.
In determining the HAC penalties, Medicare judged hospitals on three measures: the frequency of central-line bloodstream infections caused by tubes used to pump fluids or medicine into veins, infections from tubes placed in bladders to remove urine, and rates of eight kinds of serious complications that occurred in hospitals, including collapsed lungs, surgical cuts, tears and reopened wounds and broken hips. Medicare tallied that and gave each hospital a score on a 10-point scale. Those in the top quarter — with a total score above 7 — were penalized.
About 1,400 hospitals are exempt from penalties because they provide specialized treatments such as psychiatry and rehabilitation or because they cater to a particular type of patient such as children and veterans. Small “critical access hospitals” that are mostly located in rural areas are also exempt, as are hospitals in Maryland, which have a special payment arrangement with the federal government.
The AHRQ study found that the biggest decreases in errors among those it studied occurred in the two categories of infections Medicare used in setting the penalties. Central-line associated bloodstream infections decreased by 49 percent and catheter-associated urinary tract infections dropped by 28 percent between 2010 and 2013. By contrast, pneumonia cases picked up by patients on ventilators that help them breathe – a condition not covered by the new penalties — decreased by only 3 percent during the same period.
Some of the errors on which the Medicare HAC penalties are based are rare compared to other mistakes the government tracks. For instance, AHRQ estimated that in 2013 there were 760,000 bad drug reactions to medicine that controls blood sugar in diabetics, but only 9,200 central-line infections. Infections from tubes inserted into urinary tracts are more common — AHRQ estimated there were 290,000 in 2013 — but those infections tend to be easier to treat and less likely to be lethal.
On the other measures, the study estimated there were 240,000 falls and more than 1 million bedsores.
In evaluating hospitals for the HAC penalties, the government adjusted infection rates by the type of hospital. When judging complications, it took into account the differing levels of sickness of each hospital’s patients, their ages and other factors that might make the patients more fragile. Still, academic medical centers have been complaining those adjustments are insufficient given the especially complicated cases they handle, such as organ transplants.
Medicare penalized 143 of 292 major teaching hospitals, the KHN analysis found. Penalized teaching hospitals included Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center and Keck Medicine of USC in Los Angeles; Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta; Northwestern Memorial Hospital and University of Illinois Hospital in Chicago; George Washington University Hospital and Washington Hospital Center in Washington, D.C.
“We know some of the procedures we do — heart transplants or resecting cancerous portions of the esophagus — are going to be just more prone to having some of these adverse events,” said Dr. Atul Grover, the chief public policy officer of the Association of American Medical Colleges. “To lump in all of those things that are very complex procedures with simple things like pneumonia or hip replacements may not be giving an accurate result.”
An analysis of the penalties that Dr. Ashish Jha, a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, conducted for KHN found that penalties were assessed against 32 percent of the hospitals with the sickest patients. Only 12 percent of hospitals with the least complex cases were punished. Hospitals with the poorest patients were also more likely to be penalized, Jha found. A fourth of the nation’s publicly owned hospitals, which often are the safety net for poor, sick people, are being punished.
“I’ve worked in community hospitals, I’ve worked in teaching hospitals. My personal experience is teaching hospitals are at least as safe if not safer,” Jha said. “But they take care of sicker populations and more complex cases that are going to have more complications. The HAC penalty program is really a teaching hospital penalty program.”
Medicare levied penalties against a third or more of the hospitals it assessed in Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Rhode Island, Utah, Washington and the District of Columbia, the KHN analysis found.
The penalties are reassessed each year and Medicare plans to add in more kinds of injuries. Starting next October, Medicare will assess rates of surgical site infections to its analysis. The following year, Medicare will examine the frequency of two antibiotic-resistant germs: Clostridium difficile, known as C. diff, and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, known as MRSA.
A request for comment from the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania was made, but we've yet to hear back.
This story is published through a news-sharing partnership between NBC10 and Kaiser Health News, a nonprofit national health policy news service.
Planning on scooping up some gifts at King of Prussia Mall Saturday? Demonstrators are planning on disrupting one of the busiest shopping days of the year with a die-in protest.
"Join us the Saturday before Christmas, as we shut down the largest mall on the East Coast," a post on the No Justice No Peace Facebook page reads. "They can try to gloss over it with the holiday, shove it under the rug, and move on with life. But we will not be silenced."
Protesters plan to gather in the busy suburban mall's food court, located at 160 N. Gulph Road, around 5 p.m. and then drop to the floor at 5:15 p.m., 5:25 p.m. and 5:45 p.m., according to the Facebook event. More than 180 people are expected to attend.
The public die-in is one of many protests happening nationwide to draw attention to the deaths of unarmed black men at the hands of police. The demonstrations followed two separate grand jury decisions not to indict the officers involved in the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown.
Protesters often shout, "I can't breathe," to reference the final moments of Garner's life, which were captured on video.
Officials with the King of Prussia Mall, aware of the scheduled die-in, said safety is their top priority.
"We respect anyone's right to assemble on public property, however... our shopping center is private property," reads a post on the King of Prussia Mall's Facebook page. "Our first concern is always to maintain a welcoming and safe environment for tenants and guests. Should a demonstration occur, keeping that environment would be our first goal."
"However, our ongoing policy has been that demonstrations are not permitted on mall property."
Along with the KOP protest, another die-in is scheduled to take place near the Bala Cynwyd Shopping Center located near the intersection of City and Belmont avenues.
A group of nearly 200 middle school students, along with their chaperones, will gather along City Avenue near Monument Road some time between 9 a.m. and 10:30 a.m., and stage a die-in in the intersection for an estimated 20 minutes, according to the Lower Merion Township Police Department.
Hot on the heels of the infamous Sony hack, Pine Forge Academy in Berks County is facing a similar threat if it doesn’t pay $1 million to a person claiming to be with a group called Heart of the People.
The private Douglas Township boarding school received an anonymous email Tuesday from a "Heart hacker” who said the organization has taken down 57 institutions. Damage was assured to Pine Forge’s computer system and property if the rasnom isn't paid.
The "hacker" claimed to be paid $900,000 by some Pine Forge alumni to perform a cyberattack against the institution. They promised no harm if the $1 million is paid. The school alerted authorities who reviewed the message and searched the grounds before declaring them safe.
"We have no information about why this monetary ransom was made, the school authorities are cooperating with police authorities as they investigate this matter and will keep us posted on any further developments," said the academy's Headmistress Nicole Falconer.
Pennsylvania state police are tracing the email from its IP address. A novel case for them, authorities are seriously looking into the matter to determine if it's a sincere threat or a prank or scam. Police advised the school to strictly follow all safety protocols and procedures.
A Delaware County doctor is in hot water after a three month-long investigation revealed an alleged "pill mill" being run out of his Media, Pa. practice.
Dr. Lawrence Wean was arrested Wednesday following an investigation into the doctor's practices by undercover detectives from multiple agencies in Delaware County.
Following the three month investigation, it was determined that Wean was operating a pill mill out of his office on Baltimore Pike, where he's been practicing for nearly two decades, said police. He also allegedly wrote prescriptions for cash, according to Delaware County District Attorney Jack Whelan.
Wean was arraigned on multiple charges in a Media courthouse Wednesday afternoon. His bail was set at 10-percent of $500,000. He remains behind bars, unable to post bail, police said.
Anti-police sentiment has materialized in the form of graffiti along a busy avenue in West Philadelphia.
Three messages were scribbled in spray paint on a fence, bar and abandoned church on Baltimore Avenue between 48th and 50th streets.
They read "PPD Killed Brandon Tate Brown," "F--- the Cops" and "Cop Lives Don't Matter."
Brandon Tate Brown is the man shot in the head and killed by a Philadelphia Police officer on Monday following an altercation during a traffic stop. The last message is a play on the chant "Black Lives Matter" that demonstrators have been using recently while protesting against police treatment of African-Americans.
The protests in Philadelphia and other cities around the nation began after grand juries declined to indict white officers in two high profile cases surrounding the deaths of unarmed black teen Michael Brown and the chokehold death of Eric Garner.
It's not clear when the structures were tagged.
"Back in the day you could really run to a cop and trust the cop, but now people are scared to go to cops," nearby resident Sharon Weaver said after seeing the message on the fence.
Kale Good, another resident, said he doesn't agree with defacing a person's property, but that he understands how a person might feel it's the only way to have their voice heard.
"I think what the person is trying to express is that they feel police in general are disregarding their lives or aren't valuing their lives, and so they probably feel an amount of frustration and this is how they expressed it," he said.
A painter was removing the "Cop Lives Don't Matter" message from the fence around noon Friday.
"It’s a shame that someone defaced someone else’s property. We’re going to handle it as a vandalism case, just like we would any other,” Philadelphia Police spokeswoman Tanya Little said.
Little said it is one person's point of view and that the department has and continues to have positive interactions with the community.
"Regardless what the message said, even if it said ‘I love the police,’ this was really a crime against someone else, the property owner," she said.
There were no leads or an estimate on the vandalism's cost, police said.
The city would handle removing the other messages, Mayor Michael Nutter's spokesman, Mark McDonald, said. He didn't immediately have further comment on the graffiti.
NBC10 also reached out to the police union, Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 5, for reaction.
The physical anti-police commentary comes a day after city leaders condemned online commentary by a Philadelphia Fire Department paramedic.
The medic, who works in Southwest Philadelphia, posted a photo to his personal Instagram account of two black men pointing guns at the head of a white police officer. The accompanying message said: "Our real enemy ... Need 2 stop pointing guns at each other and at the ones that's legally killing us and innocents."
The post has since been deleted, an apology made and investigation launched.
A rally in support of the city's men and women in blue is being held on Friday night in the Mayfair section of the city. According to the event's Facebook group, more than 2,000 people said they planned to attend.
A Doylestown resident is facing charges after he called police to report a carjacking that he said involved Bradley Stone at the height of the manhunt for the former-marine who went on a shooting spree earlier that day -- killing his ex-wife and five of her family members -- in Montgomery County.
Luke Sanderlin, 34, made a call to police late Monday and told them that an armed Bradley Stone ran up to him while he was walking his dog near the Stonington Farm Apartment Complex and demanded his car keys, according to officials. Sanderlin allegedly told police he pulled a gun on Stone and scared him into the woods.
Stone, who was being pursued after he allegedly went on a violent spree killing his ex, Nichole Hill Stone, her mother, grandmother, sister, brother-in-law and niece. He also injured Anthony Flick, Stone Hill's 17-year-old nephew, said investigators.
The false report resulted in the lockdown of the apartment complex, but also the Central Bucks YMCA and Central Bucks West High School. Police from three counties spent four hours combing Doylestown before determining that Stone was not in the area -- wasting resources and taxpayer money, said Bucks County District Attorney David Heckler.
"We are still counting the costs in taxpayers' dollars wasted by Mr. Sanderlin," said Heckler.
Sanderlin is charged with risking catastrophe, reckless endangerment, false alarms and false reports. He's being held on $25,000 cash bail.
"Because Sanderlin's false report came in the midst of the manhunt for a dangerous and unpredictable killer, this hoax had the effect of diverting important resources which should have been devoted to protecting the public from a real threat, not a phony one."
Sanderlin reported the fake carjacking to raise money for treatment for an allegedly disease, said police.
Bradley Stone was found dead the following day in the woods near his Pennsburg home.
Delaware County Animal Control scanned a stray dog's microchip Thursday afternoon in Chester County to find it belonged to someone in North Carolina. A month after his disappearance, Max is finally returning to his owner, Traci Harrison, tonight.
Around Nov. 17 or 18, Max escaped from Traci's backyard in High Point, North Carolina. Her father had just gone into the hospital for organ failure and she was staying with him around the clock. Traci didn't realize her dog was gone until the morning of Wednesday Nov. 19 when he didn't come running for his food.
"It was a tough time," she said. "His nickname is Houdini," she continued on a lighter note, describing her dog's tendency to disappear. "He likes to dig. He squeezed between the chain link fence and brick of the house, miraculously, and got out."
No one other than Max knows exactly what happened next, but he was probably picked up by someone who drove with him north into Pennsylvania. He then escaped for the second time and was picked up by Eddystone Police after some kids reported a friendly, stray dog, according to the Philadelphia Animal Hospital.
After a quick scan of Max's chip in their truck, Animal Control Officer Lisa Stewart thought he was a rescue, brought up north by a local shelter. After some investigation, Control reached out to Traci who was driving home with a pizza when she got the call Thursday, exactly a month after Max's disappearance.
"I was trying to write down the information on the pizza box in the car," she said describing how her initial confusion during the call turned to elation. "I didn't think I'd ever see him again. Just the perfect Christmas present for me."
Max is set to board a plane Friday for the hour and a half journey home from Philadelphia International Airport. Traci, 42, can barely contain her excitement.
"I just wanna squeeze him to death. I just want to sit on the floor at the airport and let time stand still because it's my buddy. I just can't wait to see him. I'm going out right now to get some new toys."
She says Max, three and a half, is amazing, protective, and like an old soul, "a little old lady's perfect little lap dog."
