Rhode Island Hospital's Response Seems Weak

Am I missing something? Nancy commented on my post below regarding Rhode Island Hospital, which operated on the wrong body part five times since 2007. Her link took me to an "Ask the president about patient safety at Rhode Island Hospital" site. There, the president defends the hospital for making mistakes. ("We perform about 25,000 surgeries annually and in each case, the physician is a competent and caring professional.") The hospital should have addressed the crisis before it was fined $150,000 and forced to add cameras in operating rooms and have clinicians observe the doctors.

I had knee surgery several years ago. My knee was marked with ink, and no less than three people verified that my right knee was indeed the right knee. There was no way the surgeon could have operated on the wrong body part. My point remains: Why didn't Rhode Island Hospital identify this smoldering crisis and change its procedures before a government agency told it to? And why isn't the hospital more aggressively reporting the actions taken than to simply post an obscure link to an ask-the-president site? Nancy, what does your crisis communications plan say about dealing with negative publicity such as this?