Texas hospital gives NICU baby wrong mother's breast milk

Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital Fort Worth fed breast milk from a different mother to a baby in its neonatal intensive care unit, according to WFAA.

Kandace Espinosa prematurely gave birth to her son Jaxon earlier this spring. She said during his stay at the hospital's NICU, she pumped breast milk, which officials stored in barcoded bottles in a NICU refrigerator or freezer.

Ms. Espinosa said nurses scanned the bottles before each feeding, reading her name out loud before feeding the baby. She told WFAA after Jaxon was discharged, she signed paperwork indicating the leftover breast milk would come home with them.

However, Ms. Espinosa said she received a call from a NICU manager telling her the hospital accidentally kept her breast milk and fed it to another baby, the report states.

"I really relate this whole situation[,] as if you're a patient in a hospital and your next-door neighbor brought medication from home and you got that medication from home," Ms. Espinosa told WFAA.

"If it's not a human error, it's a system error and I think that's what needs to be addressed because I don't think any system that's fully functioning would allow you to scan that bottle to another patient when it's already registered to another," she added.

A spokesperson for Arlington-based Texas Health Resources, the parent company of Texas Health Harris Methodist, told the publication July 13, "We regret that this happened and apologize for the mistake. We have conducted a full review of what happened and have reinforced our safeguards to better avoid this in the future."

To access the full report, click here.

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