Help Joe Auteri fight this injustice

My name is Joe Auteri. I grew up in the Doylestown area, where my wife and I currently reside. We both graduated from Central Bucks East High School, where I played baseball and football, and my wife Maia was a swimmer, and played field hockey and lacrosse. I left the area to attend college at Harvard University in Cambridge MA, then 4 years at Thomas Jefferson Medical School in Philadelphia, and then 9 years of training in General Surgery and subsequently Cardiac Surgery at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York. I spent 12 years in the Scottsdale/Phoenix area, ultimately rising to be the Medical Director of the Scottsdale Heart Institute. My mentor while in training at Columbia was nationally renowned cardiac surgeon Dr. Craig Smith who then recruited me to open a Cardiac Surgical program at one of Columbia’s satellites in Portsmouth, VA. Shortly thereafter, my hometown hospital in Doylestown, PA called looking to see if I would be interested in becoming their Medical Director and Chief of Cardiovascular Surgery.  After much prayer and careful consideration we chose to move our family back home to Doylestown, and have been quite happy with that decision.

 

During my time at these various programs, I have been intimately involved in building a stand-alone Heart Hospital as well as new Cardiac Wings, including here at Doylestown Hospital. I have also enjoyed meeting with community members to raise funds for expansion as well as new state of the art equipment, bringing our community and patients a better experience at their local hospital, rather than having to travel to the city for their advanced care.

 

I have been at Doylestown Hospital since May 2007. When I arrived, Doylestown Hospital was a small community hospital of 180 beds. Since my arrival we have grown the program from 166 cardiac cases the calendar year before I arrived, to our record volume of over 400 cases in 2021, making 2021 the highest volume of cardiac cases in the history of the program. Along with the increased volume, we have demonstrated excellent results. Among the Delaware Valley Chapter of the STS (Society of Thoracic Surgeons) which has 36 cardiac surgical hospitals including Penn, Jefferson, and Temple, Doylestown Hospital is rated in the top 3 out of the 36 hospitals for a number of quality indicators (Coronary Artery Bypass mortality, Aortic Valve mortality, TAVR mortality, post-operative ventilator dependence, infection rate and kidney failure, among others). In addition, Doylestown has recently been ranked by Thomson Reuters in the Top 50 Heart Hospitals in the entire nation, and in the top 4 in the nation for survival after Heart Attack (out of 6000 hospitals in the US with a cath lab). We are all very proud of these achievements.

 

In addition, before I arrived, we were performing less than 50 peripheral vascular cases per year. We were able to recruit an excellent vascular surgeon to the hospital four years ago, and the number of our vascular cases has greatly increased, and is now consistently between 450 and 500 vascular cases per year. We have added two other vascular surgeons, and are now able to offer excellent Vascular Surgery to our community and our patients locally.  We are all very proud of this dramatic programmatic growth and the excellent results that we have achieved as a team.

 

During my time as Chief of Cardiovascular Surgery, we instituted a new cutting edge procedure where we replace the Aortic Valve without a chest incision, thereby avoiding a lot of the pain afterward, and the long recovery time, with patients typically going home the next morning. This is known as TAVR (Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement) and we have now performed over 550 TAVRs with only 2 deaths, yielding a mortality rate of less than 0.2%, when the expected mortality from a TAVR is 5-8% nationally.

 

In addition to all the advances in open cardiac surgery, we’ve also instituted a number of other less invasive procedures. For anyone affected by stroke, you know that minutes are precious, time is brain tissue. We are now able to remove clot from the brain with a catheter at Doylestown Hospital, avoiding a helicopter ride downtown which wastes critical time. In addition we can now treat atrial fibrillation (Convergent Maze and Watchman procedure), a leaky mitral valve (Mitral Clip), and infected pacemaker leads (lead extraction) all without surgical intervention.

 

During this period of rapid growth, we realized that we needed more space. We undertook a very ambitious 5-year fundraising effort entitled One Vision-The Campaign for Doylestown Health. With the help of very generous members of our community, we embarked on a philanthropic goal of raising $100 million. The previous high water mark for philanthropy at Doylestown was $12 million raised before my arrival (for the ER expansion). Just a few weeks ago we surpassed the $80 million mark, still with two years to go in the Capital Campaign. We have added a new Cardiac Wing, and are now up to 275 beds, greatly improving our ability to become a regional referral center for complex cardiology and cardiac surgical care.

 

Focusing on quality is certainly one ingredient to producing all of this growth. But another often overlooked aspect is the focus on nursing staff, hospital staff, physician staff, and administrative staff. No one individual can make all of this happen, it takes a team of people all pulling in the same direction.

 

I have been very happy at Doylestown for the past 14 years. The program has grown tremendously and has achieved great distinction both regionally and nationally.

 

I personally contracted Covid in May, and after a difficult two weeks, I subsequently recovered. I was tested and have both Antibodies, as well as T-cell immunity, which my personal physician describes as “robust natural immunity”.  Doylestown hospital put in place a vaccine mandate for all employees, in advance of the Federal mandate for all healthcare workers. I applied for Religious Exemption (1 Cor 6:19), as well as Medical Exemption (previous exposure with robust natural immunity), but was denied both requests, despite the hospital approving these requests for other employees. I declined the vaccine, and was promptly terminated, despite all that we’ve accomplished together.  I was denied any opportunity for reasonable accommodation.

 

The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has since withdrawn the vaccine mandate for all healthcare workers after two different Federal Judges ruled it was unconstitutional. Large healthcare systems have also withdrawn their mandates as well, including The Cleveland Clinic. Other local area hospitals opted to recognize natural immunity, but Doylestown Hospital chose not to. I am fighting to get my job back, the program I helped build into national prominence… In the town where I grew up, and played high school football 100 yards from the hospital…where my wife and I raised our three boys. I love Doylestown and I want to remain in this community and continue serving you and caring for your family members as I would my own.

 

I am looking to fund legal counsel to help me get my job back. I never expected to be in a legal battle with the Hospital that I have poured my heart and soul into. My attorney has said that this will take $150,000 or more to litigate. I feel what they did to me and other healthcare workers was wrong. I never prepared a contingency fund for these legal expenses, and therefore I am asking for donations to help me fight this injustice.

 

Will you please help me ?

 

 

Joseph S. Auteri, MD