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Just ran across this article.. UGh!
Often-sued doctor still practicing
2 new lawsuits filed over care in Irondale
Saturday, December 02, 2006
ANNA VELASCO
News staff writer
Renee Blackman walked into an American Family Care clinic in Irondale on Nov. 1 to have her skin infections rechecked and to get results from lab tests. The 29-year-old Moody resident left in convulsions in an ambulance after getting an overdose of an anti-nausea medication, according to a lawsuit she recently filed in Jefferson County Circuit Court against the treating doctor and the clinic.
With his wife on a ventilator, in a coma for 26 hours and hospitalized for a week at Trinity Medical Center, Sloan Blackman knew something had gone terribly wrong. What he didn't know was that Dr. Christopher Martin, a doctor of osteopathy, had moved from job to job and state to state for much of his 21-year career, with a trail of litigants and medical regulators behind him.
The young couple later learned that Martin, 48, had:
Legally changed his name in March from John A. King.
Been a defendant in more than 100 malpractice suits over care given in less than 12 months in 2002 and 2003, at a hospital in Hurricane, W.Va. Those cases are pending.
Been accused in lawsuits of maiming or killing patients through malpractice.
Been sued by his parents, Herman and Wynell King of Birmingham, for failure to repay school loans they made to him.
Surrendered or lost his license to practice medicine in at least five states.
Martin let his license expire in two other states. He still has a medical license in Alabama and in seven other states - Georgia, Tennessee, Florida, Indiana, Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey.
Dr. Edgar Dawson, a Los Angeles surgeon and expert hired by Putnam General Hospital in West Virginia to review selected cases performed by Martin, testified at a hearing in July 2003 that Martin was a "snake-oil salesman" and "criminal," and was "not competent to practice medicine," according to a slander suit Martin later filed against Dawson, who died in Decembert 2003. The suit was dismissed in 2005.
Efforts to reach Martin through several of his lawyers failed. The address he commonly gives is for a mailbox at a UPS store in Orlando.
Sloan Blackman said he wonders why American Family Care hired Martin, who worked briefly this fall at the company's clinics in Irondale and Trussville.
"If I could pull all that stuff up on him in 15 minutes on the Internet, how could they hire him?" he asked.
American Family Care operates 20 clinics in Alabama. Patients don't need appointments and most are treated for routine, primary care problems.
Dr. Bruce Irwin, owner and chairman of American Family Care, said he could not comment on Martin because of the pending litigation.
911:
Renee Blackman was expecting at her follow-up visit to see the doctor who had first treated her staph infection. When Martin came into the exam room, she complained of queasiness and said she might throw up.
The Blackmans said in an interview that Martin whisked her into another room, saying he could help her nausea. The lawsuit says he started an intravenous solution of a "lethal dose" of Phenergan, for nausea.
Within minutes of the IV she began to have seizures and then passed out, her lawsuit says.
The 29-year-old husband said he saw panic on the face of Martin's assistant and insisted someone call 911 to get help.
"I was really starting to freak out," Sloan Blackman said in an interview. "I thought she was dying."
Sloan Blackman, who does maintenance work on fitness equipment for the area's YMCAs, said that once he asked for an ambulance, Martin threw up his hands, backed away from the stretcher and paced in figure eights, whistling.
Once Renee Blackman reached Trinity Medical Center's emergency department, the doctors had trouble getting American Family Care to fax them her records to see what medicine she'd been given, the suit says. Then another doctor from American Family Care showed up and said she was given 300 milligrams of Phenergan and other drugs, according to the lawsuit.
Renee Blackman, a real estate analyst for a mortgage company, is still recovering and hasn't returned to work. She said her new doctor said she has symptoms of having had a mild stroke, such as having to relearn how to spell words.
The day after Blackman's visit, Martin treated Misty Shephard, 28, of Leeds at the Irondale clinic. Shephard filed suit Friday in Jefferson County against Martin and American Family Care over the treatment she received Nov. 2 for a staph infection.
Shephard said in her lawsuit that Martin gave her an IV of Phenergan, Valium, Stadol and Rocephin while he drained and packed her abscess. She said he sedated her but did not give her enough to numb the pain, the suit says.
Martin cut, drained and packed the abscess, disregarding the patient's screams of pain, the suit says.
Martin's "excessive" packing of the wound made it more infected and caused unnecessary scar tissue, the suit says.
Birmingham native:
John Anderson King was born in Birmingham on Aug. 15, 1958. He graduated from Birmingham-Southern College in 1980 with an undergraduate degree in chemistry. Martin then went to an osteopathic school in Maine, the University of New England College of Osteopathic Medicine, and graduated in 1984.
Doctors of osteopathy, DOs, are licensed physicians but have different training programs from medical doctors, MDs. Osteopathic medicine has a holistic philosophy that emphasizes physical, hands-on manipulation of the body to diagnose and treat illness, in addition to using the tools of modern medicine.
After being licensed as a DO, Martin did multiple residency programs in anesthesia, obstetrics and gynecology and orthopedics. It's unclear if he finished any of the programs. Martin has claimed on various states' forms that his specialties include anesthesia and orthopedic surgery, but he is not certified in any specialty by the American Osteopathic Association.
A spokesman for the national association said Martin is not eligible to be specialty certified by the group because he didn't complete an approved residency. Martin also does not have specialty board certification from the American Board of Medical Specialties, an umbrella group that oversees certification for most MDs and some DOs, according to the board.
Martin practiced as an anesthesiologist at Walker Regional Medical Center in Jasper in 1989. The hospital suspended his privileges later that year. But Martin, then known as King, volunteered to resign from the staff in exchange for the hospital`s lifting the suspension. The hospital agreed to the deal, documents show.
Martin's insurance company later settled a malpractice case from 1989 involving a Walker County woman who claimed she suffered permanent injuries from anesthesia inserted into the spine by Martin, court records show.
Licensed in many states:
Martin at one time held licenses in more than a dozen states.
He was recruited to Putnam General Hospital in West Virginia in late 2002 as a spinal surgeon and stayed there until the summer of 2003, when the hospital suspended some of his clinical privileges, state medical board records show.
In one of more than 100 malpractice cases stemming from that period, a patient claimed Martin unnecessarily amputated her leg, court records show.
In another case, Chris Linville, the son of one of Martin's patients, sued him and the hospital over his mother's death. The suit says Martin performed unnecessary back surgery on Cora Linville, from which she had complications, and then performed another surgery that was inappropriate given her earlier problems. Cora Linville died on Nov. 4, 2005, from an infection related to Martin's negligence, the suit says.
Chris Linville, in an interview, said his mother had only occasional back pain before the surgery. Martin convinced her she would be incontinent and would have to use a wheelchair within six months without the initial operation, the lawsuit says.
"He said he was well-renowned and had all this surgical training," Linville said. "She was hurting so bad (after the operation), she said she wished she could die."
Two months after Putnam General suspended some of his privileges, Martin turned in his medical license from West Virginia. The state later revoked the license, but Martin fought for and won a reversal of the revocation status, saying regulators had not conducted an investigation.
Putnam General and West Virginia's initial actions caused a ripple effect on Martin's licenses in other states. He subsequently lost or surrendered his license in Texas, Michigan, Virginia and Ohio based on the West Virginia case, records show.
The Alabama Board of Medical Examiners recommended revocation of Martin's license in the fall of 2005 because it said he committed fraud in renewing his license. The board said Martin asserted he wasn't under investigation by other boards when in fact he was.
The Medical Licensure Commission of Alabama instead reprimanded Martin in February, fined him $2,500 and ordered him to complete a medical ethics course by the end of the year. He has been licensed in Alabama since 1985.
In March, Martin had his name legally changed in Dothan from John King, citing identity theft. The public in Alabama now can look up the doctor's record only by using his new name.
Larry Dixon, executive director of the Alabama Board of Medical Examiners, said the Licensure Commission can revoke a physician's license if it is revoked by another state. When West Virginia reversed its revocation of Martin's license, "they pulled the rug out from under us," Dixon said.
Dixon said he could not say whether the board is investigating Martin.
Both the Blackmans and Shephard say they intend to file complaints with the state.
Where is he?:
Attorneys for Blackman and Shephard haven't been able to find Martin to serve him with their lawsuits.
Martin showed up Friday in West Virginia for a hearing in cases there, but the Birmingham lawyers were prevented from serving him with legal papers then because of a technicality in Alabama law over the type of service. Martin had tried to avoid a personal appearance in West Virginia on Friday, citing concerns for his safety, but the judge demanded his presence.
Reached at her home in Birmingham, Martin's mother, Wynell King, refused to discuss her son.
"I don't know a thing in the world about him," she said.
Leila Watson, a lawyer for Blackman and Shephard, said she hopes someone can help them find Martin.
"We want to stop him," she said.
Often-sued doctor still practicing
2 new lawsuits filed over care in Irondale
Saturday, December 02, 2006
ANNA VELASCO
News staff writer
Renee Blackman walked into an American Family Care clinic in Irondale on Nov. 1 to have her skin infections rechecked and to get results from lab tests. The 29-year-old Moody resident left in convulsions in an ambulance after getting an overdose of an anti-nausea medication, according to a lawsuit she recently filed in Jefferson County Circuit Court against the treating doctor and the clinic.
With his wife on a ventilator, in a coma for 26 hours and hospitalized for a week at Trinity Medical Center, Sloan Blackman knew something had gone terribly wrong. What he didn't know was that Dr. Christopher Martin, a doctor of osteopathy, had moved from job to job and state to state for much of his 21-year career, with a trail of litigants and medical regulators behind him.
The young couple later learned that Martin, 48, had:
Legally changed his name in March from John A. King.
Been a defendant in more than 100 malpractice suits over care given in less than 12 months in 2002 and 2003, at a hospital in Hurricane, W.Va. Those cases are pending.
Been accused in lawsuits of maiming or killing patients through malpractice.
Been sued by his parents, Herman and Wynell King of Birmingham, for failure to repay school loans they made to him.
Surrendered or lost his license to practice medicine in at least five states.
Martin let his license expire in two other states. He still has a medical license in Alabama and in seven other states - Georgia, Tennessee, Florida, Indiana, Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey.
Dr. Edgar Dawson, a Los Angeles surgeon and expert hired by Putnam General Hospital in West Virginia to review selected cases performed by Martin, testified at a hearing in July 2003 that Martin was a "snake-oil salesman" and "criminal," and was "not competent to practice medicine," according to a slander suit Martin later filed against Dawson, who died in Decembert 2003. The suit was dismissed in 2005.
Efforts to reach Martin through several of his lawyers failed. The address he commonly gives is for a mailbox at a UPS store in Orlando.
Sloan Blackman said he wonders why American Family Care hired Martin, who worked briefly this fall at the company's clinics in Irondale and Trussville.
"If I could pull all that stuff up on him in 15 minutes on the Internet, how could they hire him?" he asked.
American Family Care operates 20 clinics in Alabama. Patients don't need appointments and most are treated for routine, primary care problems.
Dr. Bruce Irwin, owner and chairman of American Family Care, said he could not comment on Martin because of the pending litigation.
911:
Renee Blackman was expecting at her follow-up visit to see the doctor who had first treated her staph infection. When Martin came into the exam room, she complained of queasiness and said she might throw up.
The Blackmans said in an interview that Martin whisked her into another room, saying he could help her nausea. The lawsuit says he started an intravenous solution of a "lethal dose" of Phenergan, for nausea.
Within minutes of the IV she began to have seizures and then passed out, her lawsuit says.
The 29-year-old husband said he saw panic on the face of Martin's assistant and insisted someone call 911 to get help.
"I was really starting to freak out," Sloan Blackman said in an interview. "I thought she was dying."
Sloan Blackman, who does maintenance work on fitness equipment for the area's YMCAs, said that once he asked for an ambulance, Martin threw up his hands, backed away from the stretcher and paced in figure eights, whistling.
Once Renee Blackman reached Trinity Medical Center's emergency department, the doctors had trouble getting American Family Care to fax them her records to see what medicine she'd been given, the suit says. Then another doctor from American Family Care showed up and said she was given 300 milligrams of Phenergan and other drugs, according to the lawsuit.
Renee Blackman, a real estate analyst for a mortgage company, is still recovering and hasn't returned to work. She said her new doctor said she has symptoms of having had a mild stroke, such as having to relearn how to spell words.
The day after Blackman's visit, Martin treated Misty Shephard, 28, of Leeds at the Irondale clinic. Shephard filed suit Friday in Jefferson County against Martin and American Family Care over the treatment she received Nov. 2 for a staph infection.
Shephard said in her lawsuit that Martin gave her an IV of Phenergan, Valium, Stadol and Rocephin while he drained and packed her abscess. She said he sedated her but did not give her enough to numb the pain, the suit says.
Martin cut, drained and packed the abscess, disregarding the patient's screams of pain, the suit says.
Martin's "excessive" packing of the wound made it more infected and caused unnecessary scar tissue, the suit says.
Birmingham native:
John Anderson King was born in Birmingham on Aug. 15, 1958. He graduated from Birmingham-Southern College in 1980 with an undergraduate degree in chemistry. Martin then went to an osteopathic school in Maine, the University of New England College of Osteopathic Medicine, and graduated in 1984.
Doctors of osteopathy, DOs, are licensed physicians but have different training programs from medical doctors, MDs. Osteopathic medicine has a holistic philosophy that emphasizes physical, hands-on manipulation of the body to diagnose and treat illness, in addition to using the tools of modern medicine.
After being licensed as a DO, Martin did multiple residency programs in anesthesia, obstetrics and gynecology and orthopedics. It's unclear if he finished any of the programs. Martin has claimed on various states' forms that his specialties include anesthesia and orthopedic surgery, but he is not certified in any specialty by the American Osteopathic Association.
A spokesman for the national association said Martin is not eligible to be specialty certified by the group because he didn't complete an approved residency. Martin also does not have specialty board certification from the American Board of Medical Specialties, an umbrella group that oversees certification for most MDs and some DOs, according to the board.
Martin practiced as an anesthesiologist at Walker Regional Medical Center in Jasper in 1989. The hospital suspended his privileges later that year. But Martin, then known as King, volunteered to resign from the staff in exchange for the hospital`s lifting the suspension. The hospital agreed to the deal, documents show.
Martin's insurance company later settled a malpractice case from 1989 involving a Walker County woman who claimed she suffered permanent injuries from anesthesia inserted into the spine by Martin, court records show.
Licensed in many states:
Martin at one time held licenses in more than a dozen states.
He was recruited to Putnam General Hospital in West Virginia in late 2002 as a spinal surgeon and stayed there until the summer of 2003, when the hospital suspended some of his clinical privileges, state medical board records show.
In one of more than 100 malpractice cases stemming from that period, a patient claimed Martin unnecessarily amputated her leg, court records show.
In another case, Chris Linville, the son of one of Martin's patients, sued him and the hospital over his mother's death. The suit says Martin performed unnecessary back surgery on Cora Linville, from which she had complications, and then performed another surgery that was inappropriate given her earlier problems. Cora Linville died on Nov. 4, 2005, from an infection related to Martin's negligence, the suit says.
Chris Linville, in an interview, said his mother had only occasional back pain before the surgery. Martin convinced her she would be incontinent and would have to use a wheelchair within six months without the initial operation, the lawsuit says.
"He said he was well-renowned and had all this surgical training," Linville said. "She was hurting so bad (after the operation), she said she wished she could die."
Two months after Putnam General suspended some of his privileges, Martin turned in his medical license from West Virginia. The state later revoked the license, but Martin fought for and won a reversal of the revocation status, saying regulators had not conducted an investigation.
Putnam General and West Virginia's initial actions caused a ripple effect on Martin's licenses in other states. He subsequently lost or surrendered his license in Texas, Michigan, Virginia and Ohio based on the West Virginia case, records show.
The Alabama Board of Medical Examiners recommended revocation of Martin's license in the fall of 2005 because it said he committed fraud in renewing his license. The board said Martin asserted he wasn't under investigation by other boards when in fact he was.
The Medical Licensure Commission of Alabama instead reprimanded Martin in February, fined him $2,500 and ordered him to complete a medical ethics course by the end of the year. He has been licensed in Alabama since 1985.
In March, Martin had his name legally changed in Dothan from John King, citing identity theft. The public in Alabama now can look up the doctor's record only by using his new name.
Larry Dixon, executive director of the Alabama Board of Medical Examiners, said the Licensure Commission can revoke a physician's license if it is revoked by another state. When West Virginia reversed its revocation of Martin's license, "they pulled the rug out from under us," Dixon said.
Dixon said he could not say whether the board is investigating Martin.
Both the Blackmans and Shephard say they intend to file complaints with the state.
Where is he?:
Attorneys for Blackman and Shephard haven't been able to find Martin to serve him with their lawsuits.
Martin showed up Friday in West Virginia for a hearing in cases there, but the Birmingham lawyers were prevented from serving him with legal papers then because of a technicality in Alabama law over the type of service. Martin had tried to avoid a personal appearance in West Virginia on Friday, citing concerns for his safety, but the judge demanded his presence.
Reached at her home in Birmingham, Martin's mother, Wynell King, refused to discuss her son.
"I don't know a thing in the world about him," she said.
Leila Watson, a lawyer for Blackman and Shephard, said she hopes someone can help them find Martin.
"We want to stop him," she said.
