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Two issues:
1. If you feel you need illicit drugs to help with your personal stressors, ASK FOR HELP!! before you're involved in a similar sad situation (below).
2. This raises new issues about liability imposed on former employers to report undesirable information.
Recommendation brings liability
Jury says problems should be disclosed
In a case that's raising questions about the liability of employers who do not disclose problems they had with former employees, a New Orleans jury has held that a local hospital and two doctors intentionally misrepresented a former anesthesiologist's qualifications to a Washington state hospital where he later botched a routine surgery, leaving a 31-year-old mother of three permanently nonresponsive.
The U.S. District Court jury's late May verdict said Lakeview Regional Medical Center and Mandeville anesthesiologists Dr. Mark Dennis and William Preau should pay at least $4.2 million for hiding the truth about Dr. xxx , 39, including xxx's dismissal by his partners and suspected diversion of hospital drugs, from Washington's Kadlec Medical Center before he was hired there in late 2001.
The verdict decided a lawsuit Kadlec and its insurer, Western Professional Insurance Co., filed against the defendants after the insurer paid $7.5 million to settle a malpractice claim brought on behalf of Kimberly Jones, the woman disabled for life by xxx's missteps.
"The verdict in this case says that doctors who have problems cannot be moved around the country without their problems being disclosed," Cahill said. "This is the first time you've had a hospital holding another hospital responsible for not disclosing information about a doctor."
Cahill said all defendants agreed in March to settle the case for about $3.5 million, but Kadlec and its insurer backed out when Lakeview Regional's owner, Nashville-based Hospital Corp. of America, demanded that the settlement and facts of the case be kept confidential "so we couldn't go out and use this to change the (credentialing) system."
The case is being closely watched by the health care industry, though the ruling could have broader implications for employers in other industries that have shied away from disclosing information about former employees, in part to reduce their liability.
xxx, a New Orleans native and Louisiana State University Medical School graduate, immediately entered a physicians' drug treatment program, a Kadlec nurse testified during trial.
xxx no longer practices medicine anywhere, including Louisiana, where the Board of Medical Examiners suspended his license after Washington authorities alerted it of xxx's problems there, records show.
According to information presented to the jury, xxx's partners at Lakeview Anesthesia Associates, including Dennis and Preau, fired him in March 2001 for putting patients at risk by working in an "impaired physical mental and emotional state." That happened after xxx didn't answer a page while on 24-hour duty at the hospital and, found sleeping in a chair, said he'd taken Valium, a sedative available only by prescription.
But just over two months after they fired xxx , Dennis and Preau praised him as an excellent clinician in letters given to Kadlec before it employed him in late 2001, trial documents showed.
The jury agreed that for its actions, Lakeview Regional should pay 25 percent of the $8.4 million, just over $2 million. They said Dennis should be responsible for paying 20 percent, $1.6 million, of the total and Preau, five percent, or $412,000.
1. If you feel you need illicit drugs to help with your personal stressors, ASK FOR HELP!! before you're involved in a similar sad situation (below).
2. This raises new issues about liability imposed on former employers to report undesirable information.
Recommendation brings liability
Jury says problems should be disclosed
In a case that's raising questions about the liability of employers who do not disclose problems they had with former employees, a New Orleans jury has held that a local hospital and two doctors intentionally misrepresented a former anesthesiologist's qualifications to a Washington state hospital where he later botched a routine surgery, leaving a 31-year-old mother of three permanently nonresponsive.
The U.S. District Court jury's late May verdict said Lakeview Regional Medical Center and Mandeville anesthesiologists Dr. Mark Dennis and William Preau should pay at least $4.2 million for hiding the truth about Dr. xxx , 39, including xxx's dismissal by his partners and suspected diversion of hospital drugs, from Washington's Kadlec Medical Center before he was hired there in late 2001.
The verdict decided a lawsuit Kadlec and its insurer, Western Professional Insurance Co., filed against the defendants after the insurer paid $7.5 million to settle a malpractice claim brought on behalf of Kimberly Jones, the woman disabled for life by xxx's missteps.
"The verdict in this case says that doctors who have problems cannot be moved around the country without their problems being disclosed," Cahill said. "This is the first time you've had a hospital holding another hospital responsible for not disclosing information about a doctor."
Cahill said all defendants agreed in March to settle the case for about $3.5 million, but Kadlec and its insurer backed out when Lakeview Regional's owner, Nashville-based Hospital Corp. of America, demanded that the settlement and facts of the case be kept confidential "so we couldn't go out and use this to change the (credentialing) system."
The case is being closely watched by the health care industry, though the ruling could have broader implications for employers in other industries that have shied away from disclosing information about former employees, in part to reduce their liability.
xxx, a New Orleans native and Louisiana State University Medical School graduate, immediately entered a physicians' drug treatment program, a Kadlec nurse testified during trial.
xxx no longer practices medicine anywhere, including Louisiana, where the Board of Medical Examiners suspended his license after Washington authorities alerted it of xxx's problems there, records show.
According to information presented to the jury, xxx's partners at Lakeview Anesthesia Associates, including Dennis and Preau, fired him in March 2001 for putting patients at risk by working in an "impaired physical mental and emotional state." That happened after xxx didn't answer a page while on 24-hour duty at the hospital and, found sleeping in a chair, said he'd taken Valium, a sedative available only by prescription.
But just over two months after they fired xxx , Dennis and Preau praised him as an excellent clinician in letters given to Kadlec before it employed him in late 2001, trial documents showed.
The jury agreed that for its actions, Lakeview Regional should pay 25 percent of the $8.4 million, just over $2 million. They said Dennis should be responsible for paying 20 percent, $1.6 million, of the total and Preau, five percent, or $412,000.
