Lawsuits allege Baylor Plano allowed "dangerous" doctor to operate

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NickNaylor said:
ONE DOCTOR SUCKS, WHOLE STATE SUCKS

CHECKS OUT
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??? "WHOLE STATE SUCKS" =/= "Oh Texas"

Did you read the article? Did you read the last paragraph? This is a problem.
 
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plumazul said:
??? "WHOLE STATE SUCKS" =/= "Oh Texas"

Did you read the article? Did you read the last paragraph? This is a problem.
Click to expand...

Yes, this story is quite old - in fact there was another thread about it within the last few months. It definitely illustrates some issues surrounding the reliability of medical boards and the "good 'ol boy"-type actions of physicians, but to imply that this is a single state's problem is ridiculous. Cherry picking to the max.
 
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Who said it was a single states problem. Are you referring to me? I just said Oh, Texas.
 
prettyNURSEtoMD said:
Who said it was a single states problem. Are you referring to me? I just said Oh, Texas.
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Perhaps you could clarify why you started the thread? Is there a particular part of the article you found interesting or think warrants discussion? What are your thoughts? When you post a link with no explanation other than "oh, Texas," people are probably going to assume you're trying to make a generalization about the state.
 
Oh well I'm from Texas and live close to Plano. I just posted it because I found it interesting that this went on for so long. Also the 50k a month stood out to me. And it was on the desk at work today and I was just spreading the info to see if these types of things were happening elsewhere because it was just recently written about. That's really it. "Oh, Texas" was just like a sigh.
 
There are dangerous doctors in every state of the US and in every country of the world.

Oh, Humanity.
 
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That's why you have to research heavy what doctor is doing your surgery. But the scary part is, he probably had so many connections, that his history probably never showed all the failed operations.
 
Life Sucks said:
That's why you have to research heavy what doctor is doing your surgery. But the scary part is, he probably had so many connections, that his history probably never showed all the failed operations.
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Atul Gawande wrote a lot about why dangerous doctors don't get reported by their peers. I think it was in his book Complications, but here's his New Yorker article on it as well. http://archives.newyorker.com/?i=2000-08-07#folio=060
 
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Excuse my ignorance, but is this something that has been known for a while, that even the instruments couldn't be autoclaved? And if so why were they still used. Maybey I misread the article, but did they say that the patient had CJD before the surgery, or they noticed later? But even still..
 
The whole story scares me and I have followed it. The surgeon was a MD/PhD, graduated summa cum laude from medical school, and was even an associate professor at a medical school, yet he managed to botch even the most routine surgeries paralyzing or killing a few people. It is almost as if he did it intentionally. In other articles, it reports that sometimes the incision was about 3 or 4 four inches away from where it should have been, his surgeries had complications never seen before with the procedures he was doing, etc.
 
prettyNURSEtoMD said:
That's interesting! I never heard of instruments needing to be destroyed after being used on patient's with CJD.
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Anything that had contact with patient fluid , but most especially anything that was in use with spinal or brain surgery, must be destroyed due to the prion from variant and regular CJD. The prion pretty much is hard to kill, though the patients supposedly have a low chance of getting it. I wouldn't want anything prion related near me, but thank god research is being done in it.
 
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prettyNURSEtoMD said:
Excuse my ignorance, but is this something that has been known for a while, that even the instruments couldn't be autoclaved? And if so why were they still used. Maybey I misread the article, but did they say that the patient had CJD before the surgery, or they noticed later? But even still..
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They found out he did.
 
knv2u said:
The whole story scares me and I have followed it. The surgeon was a MD/PhD, graduated summa cum laude from medical school, and was even an associate professor at a medical school, yet he managed to botch even the most routine surgeries paralyzing or killing a few people. It is almost as if he did it intentionally. In other articles, it reports that sometimes the incision was about 3 or 4 four inches away from where it should have been, his surgeries had complications never seen before with the procedures he was doing, etc.
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Read deeper. It says several of his collogues said he was a druggy and most describe him as abnormal. Dude could just be a legal serial killer. Medicine, law, Dentistry, and obviously politics can attract these sociopaths who feel like they are perfect to the world, case in point:http://www.cbsnews.com/news/doctor-carves-initials-in-patient/
 
Life Sucks said:
That's why you have to research heavy what doctor is doing your surgery. But the scary part is, he probably had so many connections, that his history probably never showed all the failed operations.
Click to expand...

And therein was the problem. If you research this out, you will see that patients had no way of knowing what had happened as you mention. After butchering patients at the first institution, he resigned and thus there was no institutional/disciplinary action taken against him. When he applied to work at subsequent hospitals, the hospitals were only informed that he had voluntarily resigned and was in good standing. The doctor even told them about at least one of the fatalities, but blamed it on complications outside of his control and this was accepted at face value. All of the complaints to the Texas Medical Board (many by his colleagues, patients, and lawyers) were kept confidential as I believe is required by Texas law. Even if you went to the health ranking websites (Health grades, etc.), the doctor had good marks up until this point. Any patient who had researched this doctor would have believed that he was highly qualified. Again, he was a MD/PhD, graduated with highest honors from medical school, multiple fellowships in neurosurgery, and was even a professor at a medical school. If I had to guess ahead of time, I would have predicted that he would have been an excellent surgeon.
 
Ooh, are we sharing medical horror stories now? This is one of the absolute worst:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Cullen

A serial killer nurse who killed people over the course of a decade. Bounced from hospital to hospital always able to find work. Several of the hospitals did figure out there was something terribly wrong with him but never communicated that to other institutions or took steps to prevent him from working.
 
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Life Sucks said:
Anything that had contact with patient fluid , but most especially anything that was in use with spinal or brain surgery, must be destroyed due to the prion from variant and regular CJD. The prion pretty much is hard to kill, though the patients supposedly have a low chance of getting it. I wouldn't want anything prion related near me, but thank god research is being done in it.
Click to expand...

Been pretty interested in prion research. Heard from some PI's that if you want to work with human prions, you have to be in a building essentially specifically designed and built for it. If the research is ever discontinued, you actually have to build a blast shell around the building and blow it up. Intense, but not unwarranted haha.
 
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Concur, while people talk about the influence of malpractice rates, "defensive medicine" and the for-profit non-profit mode of health care, very few people talk about the damage bad doctors inflict upon the practice of Medicine.

If doctors were more willing to get rid of the bad apples, then I suspect that there'd be less cost to American health care.

plumazul said:
??? "WHOLE STATE SUCKS" =/= "Oh Texas"

Did you read the article? Did you read the last paragraph? This is a problem.
Click to expand...
 
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Microglia said:
Been pretty interested in prion research. Heard from some PI's that if you want to work with human prions, you have to be in a building essentially specifically designed and built for it. If the research is ever discontinued, you actually have to build a blast shell around the building and blow it up. Intense, but not unwarranted haha.
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I'm interested in it too. It's like disposing chemical weapons...look at what the CDC requires for body disposal.
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvrd/cjd/funeral_directors.htm
 
knv2u said:
And therein was the problem. If you research this out, you will see that patients had no way of knowing what had happened as you mention. After butchering patients at the first institution, he resigned and thus there was no institutional/disciplinary action taken against him. When he applied to work at subsequent hospitals, the hospitals were only informed that he had voluntarily resigned and was in good standing. The doctor even told them about at least one of the fatalities, but blamed it on complications outside of his control and this was accepted at face value. All of the complaints to the Texas Medical Board (many by his colleagues, patients, and lawyers) were kept confidential as I believe is required by Texas law. Even if you went to the health ranking websites (Health grades, etc.), the doctor had good marks up until this point. Any patient who had researched this doctor would have believed that he was highly qualified. Again, he was a MD/PhD, graduated with highest honors from medical school, multiple fellowships in neurosurgery, and was even a professor at a medical school. If I had to guess ahead of time, I would have predicted that he would have been an excellent surgeon.
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I've concluded the only way to know if a surgeon is good or not is to talk directly to someone with good judgment and lots of experience who has worked with him in an operating room and is willing to offer a true opinion. Which can be damn hard to do even when you work in medicine.
 
Goro said:
Concur, while people talk about the influence of malpractice rates, "defensive medicine" and the for-profit non-profit mode of health care, very few people talk about the damage bad doctors inflict upon the practice of Medicine.

If doctors were more willing to get rid of the bad apples, then I suspect that there'd be less cost to American health care.
Click to expand...
Ironically, I had a bad experience with one as a patient.
 
SN12357 said:
I've concluded the only way to know if a surgeon is good or not is to talk directly to someone with good judgment and lots of experience who has worked with him in an operating room and is willing to offer a true opinion. Which can be damn hard to do even when you work in medicine.
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Or you can look them up on the medical board and see what has been reported... that works too. I know someone who does this before seeing any new doctor. But I guess she'd be back to zero if nothing has been reported.
 
Here is another article about this guy. Pretty interesting discussion. I want to know how someone can finish a 7 year residency and still be so incompetent? What program did he come from, and who was in charge of him?
 
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Yeah, I knew that from a more credible site than healthgrades, I just didn't want to mention it due to my words being misinterpreted.
 
Shjanzey said:
Here is another article about this guy. Pretty interesting discussion. I want to know how someone can finish a 7 year residency and still be so incompetent? What program did he come from, and who was in charge of him?
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Idk if this is bad, but I'm not sure I trust people who spent the time completing both an MD/PhD and a neurosurg residency. That's so many years of no money, and it seems to me like the majority of people willing to do that (though there are probably only a couple) would be severely obsessed with prestige and nothing else.
 
Microglia said:
Idk if this is bad, but I'm not sure I trust people who spent the time completing both an MD/PhD and a neurosurg residency. That's so many years of no money, and it seems to me like the majority of people willing to do that (though there are probably only a couple) would be severely obsessed with prestige and nothing else.
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That's a VERY interesting view. I just discussed this with my physician on today, and he said "neurosurgery is a very demanding speciality and it wouldn't surprise me if he had something mental going on". There were allegations that he was a "sociopath", I wonder how true that is. But I didn't think of it the way you did, that's a unique observation.
 
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Microglia said:
Idk if this is bad, but I'm not sure I trust people who spent the time completing both an MD/PhD and a neurosurg residency. That's so many years of no money, and it seems to me like the majority of people willing to do that (though there are probably only a couple) would be severely obsessed with prestige and nothing else.
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Idk, at the institution I work at there's an MD/PHD neurosurgeon who went to Upenn for his MD/PHD and residency. I haven't met him personally, but I heard on multiple accounts that he's a really nice chill guy. Some people want to do neurosurgery research and are willing to enjoy the decade and a half long ride I guess.
 
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Reckoner said:
University of Tennessee, if you believe healthgrades
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I'm much less interested in where he went to medical school than in his residency program. Your medical school isn't saying you're qualified operate on your own when they give you an MD.

Microglia said:
Idk if this is bad, but I'm not sure I trust people who spent the time completing both an MD/PhD and a neurosurg residency. That's so many years of no money, and it seems to me like the majority of people willing to do that (though there are probably only a couple) would be severely obsessed with prestige and nothing else.
Click to expand...

This doesn't make any sense. Neurosurgery is a research-heavy field; is it any surprise that a lot of them end up doing PhDs? I don't think anybody would be able to tough it out through an MD/PhD and a neursurg residency based on prestige hunger.
 
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histidine said:
Idk, at the institution I work at there's an MD/PHD neurosurgeon who went to Upenn for his MD/PHD and residency. I haven't met him personally, but I heard on multiple accounts that he's a really nice chill guy. Some people want to do neurosurgery research and are willing to enjoy the decade and a half long ride I guess.
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I shadowed him! Very nice guy indeed.

mcloaf said:
I'm much less interested in where he went to medical school than in his residency program. Your medical school isn't saying you're qualified operate on your own when they give you an MD.
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He did his residency at Tennessee as well according to the Texas Observer article.
 
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I just googled MD/PHD Neurosurgery and it seems like there are actually quite a lot. If you look at the faculty of neurosurgery departments of medical schools, a good portion are MD/PHDs. For example, 9/23 neurosurgeons at UCLA are MD/PHDs. http://neurosurgery.ucla.edu/body.cfm?id=12

It seems like a lot of md/phd neurosurgeons are doing research on procedures as opposed to basic science. Pretty awesome.
 
mcloaf said:
I'm much less interested in where he went to medical school than in his residency program. Your medical school isn't saying you're qualified operate on your own when they give you an MD.

This doesn't make any sense. Neurosurgery is a research-heavy field; is it any surprise that a lot of them end up doing PhDs? I don't think anybody would be able to tough it out through an MD/PhD and a neursurg residency based on prestige hunger.
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He did residency at the same institution.
 
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NickNaylor said:
Yes, this story is quite old - in fact there was another thread about it within the last few months. It definitely illustrates some issues surrounding the reliability of medical boards and the "good 'ol boy"-type actions of physicians, but to imply that this is a single state's problem is ridiculous. Cherry picking to the max.
Click to expand...
I have to disagree with you here. I don't think she is implying that this only happens in Texas. However, a last paragraph does show a big problem in Texas legislature that leaves people there less protected than people in many other states. Malice on the part of the institution is much harder and almost impossible to prove comparing to negligence.
 
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Microglia said:
Idk if this is bad, but I'm not sure I trust people who spent the time completing both an MD/PhD and a neurosurg residency. That's so many years of no money, and it seems to me like the majority of people willing to do that (though there are probably only a couple) would be severely obsessed with prestige and nothing else.
Click to expand...


By this logic though, anyone who does volunteer work or sacrifices quality of life would be suspect for being unstable. While prestige certainly is a factor, i suspect that people who pursue neurosurgery find that it inspires them and they are truly passionate about the work. Though I admit in this particular case there could be some kind of personality disorder at play.
 
Chir0nex said:
By this logic though, anyone who does volunteer work or sacrifices quality of life would be suspect for being unstable. While prestige certainly is a factor, i suspect that people who pursue neurosurgery find that it inspires them and they are truly passionate about the work. Though I admit in this particular case there could be some kind of personality disorder at play.
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I appreciate all the logic out here, always nice to hear other perspectives! (Plus I always love a good philosophical conversation haha). Just want to make it clear that I wasn't making a claim about neurosurgery in general. I should have phrased more carefully though, because I don't like generalizations as a whole haha. If I were to just guess without any real evidence, I would wonder if people who are drawn to do both an MD/PhD and neurosurgery residency are more likely to have some sort of prestige complex (ie there is a higher percentage of neurosurgeon, MD/PhD's with some sort of prestige complex). I'm sure there are also many terrific ones out there that will save many lives. :)
 
Shjanzey said:
Here is another article about this guy. Pretty interesting discussion. I want to know how someone can finish a 7 year residency and still be so incompetent? What program did he come from, and who was in charge of him?
Click to expand...

I understand that there are a lot of frivolous lawsuits brought on by lawyers these days and state legislatures try to stop these lawsuits. However, after reading this article, it seems like that Texas laws regarding medical practice or practitioners are on the laissez faire side.
 
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Ace-Co-A said:
yea... texas blows...
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Yeah... not having to pay state income tax or the insanely low prices on real estate and medical school blows hard..
Having the largest medical center in the world blows also.
 
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GandalfTheWhite said:
Yeah... not having to pay state income tax or the insanely low prices on real estate and medical school blows hard..
Having the largest medical center in the world blows also.
Click to expand...
:laugh: you know you're a pre-med when the bolded makes up half of your defense of your state.
 
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