Rhode Island Hospital is hit with $300,000 fine

A surgical instrument was discovered on Oct. 15 in the abdomen of a patient who had undergone surgery at Rhode Island Hospital three months earlier.

Hospital officials revealed the incident, which they said they learned about only last Friday, at a news briefing Tuesday. An imaging test detected the instrument, believed to be forceps.

The briefing was held to discuss a separate surgical error that occurred in August, in which a broken drill-bit piece was left in a patient’s scalp.