Six of the abortion clinics in the state that were ordered to remedy problems when routine inspections were resumed last year are in Pittsburgh, according to state records.
The clinics are among 22 free-standing facilities that were inspected in 2010 because the state failed to conduct the reviews for more than 15 years.
None of the conditions found in the 22 clinics remotely approached the filthy and illegal operations described at the now-shuttered Philadelphia abortion clinic operated by Dr. Kermit Gosnell that investigators described as a "house of horrors," according to records.
Planned Parenthood of Western Pennsylvania, Downtown, was cited for a lack of written evidence that its physicians had to supervise the licensed practical nurses working in the recovery room. It responded by simply updating doctors' job descriptions to specify that was their duty, chief executive Kim Evert said.
"That was the end of it," Evert said. "We don't have any problem with the state inspecting on a regular basis."
Also cited here were Allegheny Women's Center in East Liberty and an abortion clinic operated at UPMC MaGee hospital in Oakland.
Both facilities corrected problems that were found, according to records.
The grand jury that investigated Gosnell, his wife and eight other clinic workers — including Steven Massof, 48, of Mt. Lebanon — had scathing criticism of Pennsylvania's state health and medical regulators for allowing the conditions at Gosnell's Women's Medical Society to exist unchecked for years.
Prosecutors said at least two women died and hundreds of babies were killed by scissors stabbed into their spines. Gosnell, 69, made millions of dollars performing as many illegal, late-term abortions as he could, prosecutors said. He is charged with eight counts of murder in the deaths of one woman and seven babies who were born alive.
Massof, who was arrested Jan. 19 by Allegheny County detectives, admitted he cut spinal cords and regularly witnessed such killings while working for Gosnell between 2003 and 2008, according to the grand jury report.
It wasn't until a February 2010 drug raid revealed conditions at Gosnell's clinic that the Health Department resumed regular inspections of the state's abortion clinics. The grand jury said those inspections had ended around 1995 for political reasons, to avoid barriers for women seeking abortions.
The most common deficiencies found by Health Department inspectors at the other abortion clinics were failures to properly report medical conditions that qualify as "serious events" and not keeping resuscitation equipment readily available, according to records obtained by the Associated Press.
Also cited were failures to test or record urine protein and blood sugar levels, and issues related to checking on post-surgery patients in the recovery room.
