Posted on 05/21/2005 7:15:04 AM PDT by nuconvert
Surgeon Goes From 'Brilliant' to Banned
By WILLIAM McCALL/Associated Press Writer
Fri May 20, 2005
As a young surgeon in upstate New York, Jayant Patel was a rising star, called "brilliant" by the doctors who trained him.
But documents obtained by The Associated Press show a darker side — a long record of botched operations, lawsuits and allegations of negligence and incompetence that have trailed him from New York to Oregon to Australia, where the media have given him the sobriquet "Dr. Death."
As details have emerged, the Indian-born doctor has taken on a Dr. Jekyll-Mr. Hyde image, raising questions about how he could keep practicing for so long.
Patel, 55, now faces an inquiry into the deaths or serious injuries of 14 patients he treated during a brief tenure as chief surgeon in the Australian outback. He has been banned from practice in Oregon and surrendered his New York license.
When he was training in the 1980s, Patel was praised by senior doctors even after he was disciplined for failing to examine patients before operating on them.
The New York Commissioner of Health at the time, Dr. David Axelrod, spared no words when he summed up the case, calling it a "serious failure" that "clearly evidenced his moral unfitness to practice medicine."
But Patel's main defender, Dr. J. Raymond Hinshaw, a University of Rochester chief surgeon, rated his skills among the top three of the 200 residents Hinshaw had worked with, according to newly released documents obtained by the AP from the Oregon Board of Medical Examiners.
After completing his residency and a three-year disciplinary probation, Patel was hired by Kaiser Permanente Hospital in Portland in 1989 on the basis of glowing recommendations from Hinshaw and other physicians who had trained him.
Dr. James Williams, who was doing surgical research on the spleen with Hinshaw, wrote that Patel's "ultimate contribution to the medical profession will be exceptional."
In a letter to the Oregon board, Hinshaw, who has since died, noted that when he operated on another physician, "the doctor requested specifically that (Patel) be my assistant. That, in my experience, is unique."
Oregon officials say they knew Patel had been disciplined in New York, but he had successfully completed his probation and earned certification from The American Board of Surgery.
He had the support of respected physicians who wrote that his "judgment was excellent," adding words such as "superlative, brilliant," said Kathleen Haley, executive director of the Oregon Board of Medical Examiners.
But by 1998, the Portland hospital had severely restricted his practice after reviewing 79 complaints. Patel was required to get a second opinion for "all complicated surgical cases."
The Oregon board started its own investigation into Patel — looking at four of the 79 complaints. In three of those cases, the patients had died. In one, according to documents, Patel performed a colostomy backward, blocking the patient's gastrointestinal system.
In 2000, the board cited Patel for "gross or repeated acts of negligence" and extended the restrictions on his practice statewide.
He left Kaiser in 2001 and resurfaced in 2003 at Bundaberg Base Hospital in the state of Queensland, Australia — where officials said he lied about his disciplinary history.
Co-workers at Bundaberg soon noticed disturbing signs.
Toni Hoffman, a nurse who worked with Patel, told the AP he regularly failed to wash his hands between patients, was belligerent toward nursing staff and often resisted transferring patients.
In a letter to the Queensland Parliament, she wrote: "Every time I see him walk into the unit ... I feel sick because I just think `who's he going to kill now, what's he going to do now?'"
Australian authorities say Patel left the country, and some reports have suggested he has returned to India. But his mother said she has not heard from him in some time.
"I understand that he is a very famous doctor in America and Australia, but about the charges against him that you are telling me now, I am in the dark," Mridulaben Patel, 89, said from the family's palatial home in the province of Gujarat.
Stephen Houze, the attorney for Patel in Portland, declined comment while the investigation in Australia is proceeding.
Patel's Oregon license was deactivated last month after the board discovered that he had failed to notify it he planned to practice in Australia, as required.
Haley, the Oregon board director, faulted Australian health officials for failing to check with Oregon before allowing Patel to practice in Queensland — a failure that has already resulted in a public apology by Australia's chief health officer, Gerry FitzGerald.
"It's really like saying the Department of Motor Vehicles of Oregon put a restriction on somebody's driver's license," Haley said. "They go to Australia, they get behind the wheel, and they kill somebody. Is it Oregon's problem? Or is it Australia's problem?"
well I had the luxury, I guess, of having to do some physical therapy on my elbow before I had it operated on. While in the physical therapy, they had some pictures of athletes and other people my surgeon had operated on. One of them specifically was Ki-Jana Carter.
when I asked about him, they told me about this and that and other accomplishments...
My elbow surgery was done by one of the best.
Sure, just ask your GP "which surgeon would you use if it was your wife or kid going under the knife?"
They'll give you an honest answer.
The other doc you can ask that question of is the local pathologist who is generally familiar with the outcomes of most surgeons.
The OR nursing staff also know as do the anesthesiology personnel.
There is a distinct possibility that political correctness played a role in this mans medical career. People are so brainwashed that none of his supervising doctors could bring themselves to say this guy is a "hack!"(pun intended)
>>• A man, 59, who permanently lost gastrointestinal function in August 1997 after Dr Patel performed a colostomy "backwards". <<
That had to be exciting! Did the patient try to kill him afterwards?
If a doctor's name
is on the chart, then he did
something in the case.
But, in general,
in any other context
this activity
would be accepted
(or even celebrated!)
as how the "market"
and legal system
compels a loose profession
to clean up its act.
But the doctors don't
turn on each other, they blame
laws and the "system."
There is only two professions where licensed and titled individuals 'practice' their trade. Lawyers and doctors!
Everyone else just performs their duties without practicing on the client.
There is of course QuackWatch, but that really doesn't tell you about individual doctors.
I did a Google search, and here might be some interesting candidates, but I cannot vouch for any of them.
Interestingly enough, the public is forbidden access to our own government databank of information (National Practitioner Data Bank in the Department of Human and Health Services) about problems with doctors:
Is prohibited by law to disclose information on a specific practitioner to the general public.
That reminds me of the joke:
What do you call someone who graduated last in his med school?
"Doctor"
If the medical profession "were protecting its own", his failures would never have seen the light of day.
It was his Portland, Oregon hospital, not the State of Oregon, that first stripped him of his right to perform surgery and that action ultimately led to his leaving the United States altogether.
Only Government agencies have the right to issue or revoke a medical license. If the world's worst doctor is practicing bad medicine in town, other doctors can ban him from their own practices or their hospitals and complain to the State but only the State has a right to strip him of his license to practice medicine in a solo practice.
This guy fled all the way to the outback of Australia in order to get away from the scrutiny of his medical colleagues.
It was the responsibility of the Australian Government to adequately investigate his competency before issuing him a license to practice medicine in Australia and the Australian Government failed to do so.
I usually get a laugh out of reading these threads. Does the medical profession protect its own?
A hospital decides to have an MD kicked of its staff for failing to practice medicine in the usual and customary manner. The physician leadership agrees, and the MD in question is told he is on probation. He continues to do the same things he's been warned not to do, and the hospital and physician leadership continue to document the instances, at extra cost to the hospital and time to the physician reviewers (review charts, speak with patients, collect outcome data, etc). All of this is done "for free". Thankfully, no harm is done to any patients. Mainly the MD in question was overbilling for procedures that he hadn't done.
The hospital, after time and effort, fires him from its staff. They report him to the state Medical Board along with all of the findings of their investigation. What do you think happened next? The fired MD sues the state Medical Board, hospital, and individual MD's that recommended his removal from the staff for "ruining" his reputation . He wins a multi million $ judgement from the hospital, his transgressions are minimized by the state Medical Board by court order, and each individual MD that was sued, spent $, time, and many sleepless nights while defending themselves in court proceedings. Luckily, the individual suits were eventually dropped.
I was intimately involved in the above case. Do physicians protect their own? You be the judge. I'll tell you that personally, I'll think long and hard before going through a situation like that again.
I honestly believe that each and every Super 8 Motel I've ever bunked at has been run by a guy named Patel.
Who do you think makes up the State Boards? Who do you think makes up the state laws? You think MD's might be involved somewhere in there?
In Texas if you are a pharmacist and go bad, the Board of Pharmacy will come down on hard, really hard.
This man has had his license yanked in New York and Oregon, and will soon be banned from practice in Australia, if he hasn't already.
It's an urban myth that incompetent doctors are allowed to practice indefinitely with no oversight. My own state of Arizona suspends or revokes dozens of medical licenses every year. And it's a myth that the various state medical boards do not communicate with each other; that may have been true once, but nowadays a suspension in one state is cause for suspension in any other state.
But the various notifications and investigations take time, if there is going to be anything like due process before someone's livelihood and twenty years of education is flushed down the toilet. And of course the investigatory process is clogged by complaints from unhappy patients who don't like their doctors' bedside manner or think his bill is too high. By law, each of those has to be investigated with the same diligence as they do for the doctor who does colostomies backwards.
The system is not perfect, but it's better than in any other country, and almost all the time it functions correctly. Horror stories like this are the rare exception, and that's why they are in the newspaper.
-ccm
"God, preserve me from bad doctors, and bad priests.
Why are they allowed to continue to practice?
Could it be that nobody is filing any Q.A. reports?
If you are seeing malpractice, then it is your ethical and legal obligation as an RN to file a report about that malpractice.
Other doctors have their own patients and practices and may have no more idea about what another doctor is doing than an RN on the Pediatric Ward knows about what an RN in the General Surgery Ward is doing.
If you see Dr. Smith committing malpractice in Room 302, you can't expect Doctor Jones in Room 507 to telepathically know about it and do something about it.
If YOU see malpractice, it is YOUR ethical and legal obligation to file a report about it with your Hospital Q.A. Committee. If the matter is not dealt with appropriately at that level, then it is YOUR ethical and legal obligation to file a report with your State Medical Licensing Q.A. Board.
If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.
"Public members"............That would also include you, would it not?
If you truly believe that State Medical Licensing Boards are nothing more than corrupt Medical Mafias, well, then, volunteer yourself to be a member of your State Board and do something about it.
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