Dennis Quaid is seen in Washington DC as he enters to speak to the 2008 Annual Health Journalism Conference.

Dennis Quaid’s twins were recent victims of medical negligence. His 16 year-old son with Meg Ryan, Jack, tagged along.

SplashNews

Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, the hospital that gave an overdose of blood thinner to three infants, including the twins of actor Dennis Quaid, has been fined $25,000.

TMZ is reporting that after an investigation, the California Department of Public Health found that hospital personnel failed to follow their own procedures for safe medication use, and that resulted in what they called “preventable medication errors.”

Back in November, the Quaids’ then 10 day old twin newborns, Thomas Boone and Zoe Grace, were given an overdose of the drug, Heparin.

According to Cedars, a total of three babies were given doses of 10,000 or more units per mililiter of the drug.

The normal dosage is 10 units.

Hospital officials said the children affected were all treated and did not show any lasting ill effects from the overdose. In December, Quaid and his wife, Kimberly Buffington, sued Baxter Healthcare, claiming the drug company failed to change the medication’s labels to prevent confusion over dosages.

WENN

Having each lived through a parent’s worst nightmare, Dennis Quaid and his wife, Kimberly, are speaking out again about the medical errors that nearly took the lives of their newborn twins – this time for a national television audience.

“[Mix-ups] happen in every hospital in every state in this country and … I’ve come to find out, there’s 100,000 people a year killed … in hospitals by a medical mistakes,” the actor, 53, tells 60 Minutes in a segment scheduled to air Sunday, CBS reports.

“It’s bigger than AIDS. It’s bigger than breast cancer. It’s bigger than automobile accidents and yet, no one seems to be really aware of the problem,” says Qauid, who also details the ordeal he and his wife experienced.

Last November, Thomas Boone and Zoe Grace Quaid – who were hospitalized due to a suspected infection – nearly died at Los Angeles’s Cedars-Sinai Medical Center after mistakenly being given a massive overdose of the drug Heparin, an adult-strength blood thinner, rather than Hep-tock, a much-weaker version of the drug routinely given to clear IV lines in pediatric patients.

“Our kids are bleeding from everyplace that they’ve punctured,” says Quaid. “They were working on Boone, whose belly button would not stop bleeding – blood squirted across the room. It was blood everywhere. It was a life-and-death situation.” (Last month, Quaid said the babies are now doing fine.)

The vials Hep-lock and Heparin looked similar, contend the Quaids, who are suing manufacturer Baxter International. A parallel incident in Indiana resulted in three infant fatalities and for Baxter to re-label its vials and issue a warning to hospitals.

“After these three kids died in Indiana, they did not issue a recall,” says Quaid, noting that toasters and trucks are routinely recalled. “They recall dog food that came from China last year. But they don’t recall medicine that kills people if you give it in the wrong dosage. We think it’s wrong.”

Debra Bello, a senior director at Baxter, tells 60 Minutes that her company did not issue a recall, “Because the product was safe and effective, and the errors, as the hospital has acknowledged, were preventable and due to failures in their system.”

Quaid is now establishing a foundation to look into preventative measures within the medical system. “We all have this inherent thing that we trust doctors and nurses, that they know what they’re doing. This mistake occurred right under our noses,” he says. “The nurse didn’t bother to look at the dosage on the bottle. It was avoidable, completely avoidable.”

Dennis Quaid leaving ABC Studios after appearing on ‘Live with Regis and Kelly’ in New York City, yesterday.

WENN

Dennis Quaid outside the Ed Sullivan Theater for the ‘Late Show With David Letterman’ in New York City, yesterday.

WENN

Dennis Quaid and Channing Tatum have been cast as the leads in Paramount’s G.I. Joe, based on the Hasbro military action figure line. Quaid will play team leader General Hawk, and Tatum will play Duke Hauser, the lead soldier who works closely on missions with fellow team member Ripcord, played by Marlon Wayans.

Also cast are Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Rachel Nichols, Sienna Miller, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, and Said Taghmaoui. Stephen Sommers is directing. Shooting is scheduled to start next month for an Aug. 7, 2009 release.

Quaid recently finished shooting the Gary Fleder-directed The Express, a biopic of college football star Ernie Davis. He will next be seen in the Noam Murro-directed Smart People and the Pete Travis-directed Vantage Point. Tatum recently completed the Kimberly Peirce-directed Stop Loss and just landed the role of Pretty Boy Floyd in the Michael Mann-directed Public Enemies, which also stars Johnny Depp and Christian Bale.

EW

Cedars-Sinai Medical Center has been cited for numerous safety lapses relating to the overdose of anti-clotting drug heparin that was given to Dennis Quaid’s newborn twins last November.

According to the Los Angeles Times, the California Department of Public Health has released a 20-page report detailing the failed procedures that led to a total of three patients (including Zoe Grace and Thomas Boone Quaid) being given a nearly fatal 1,000 times the prescribed dosage of heparin.

“This violation involved multiple failures by the facility to adhere to established policies and procedures for safe medication use,” the state wrote in its report. “These violations caused, or were likely to cause, serious injury or death to the patients who received the wrong medication.”

The prestigious L.A. hospital could also be issued fines by the state.

In a written statement, Dr. Michael L. Langberg, Cedars-Sinai’s chief medical officer, said the state report confirmed the hospital’s own investigation into the incidents.

“While this is a rare event, we are pleased that the [public health department] shares our view that it is an important opportunity for the entire institution to explore any and all ways we can further improve medication safety,” Langberg said.

Among the hospital’s errors cited in the report: medical staff failed to check product labels before they dispensed heparin, did not keep proper records of the drug’s usage, and the hospital didn’t take steps to implement its own policies on high-risk medications.

The Quaid twins were released from the hospital in early December, after which Quaid and his wife Kimberly filed a lawsuit against Chicago-based Baxter Healthcare Corp., the maker of heparin. As of Wednesday, the Quaids have not sued Cedars-Sinai for its errors.

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