St. Mary’s Medical Center in Florida, in an announcement on Monday, said it is permanently closing down its pediatric cardiothoracic surgery program. The move has come after results of a yearlong CNN investigation were released.

The CNN investigation unveiled that from 2011 to 2013, the program had nearly 12.5% mortality rate for open heart surgeries, which is more than three times the national average. It also found that at least nine babies died after having heart surgery at the hospital ever since the program was started in 2011.

As per the report, surgeries and deaths continued at same pace even after the chairman of an expert state panel recommended in June 2014 that St. Mary’s has to stop doing heart surgeries on babies below the age of 6 months, and stop doing complex heart surgeries on all children.

The West Palm Beach hospital said, “We are proud of the work that has been done and the lives that have been saved. This is the decision of the hospital and not based on a decision or recommendation by the state of Florida or any regulatory agency”.

The inaccurate media reports on their program have made it more challenging to build sustainable volume in our program, it added.

After the publishing of CNN's investigation report, the hospital immediately released a statement saying that CNN’s mortality calculation is “wrong, exaggerated and completely erroneous”. It mentioned that the program’s risk-adjusted mortality rate was within the average range for pediatric heart surgery programs nationwide.

It will launch a comprehensive review of its pediatric cardiac surgery program and will not schedule any elective pediatric congenital cardiac surgery cases until the review was completed, it added.