$15M settlement reached after doctors allegedly left heart surgeries to perform other operations
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 24 มิ.ย. 2024
- Three Texas Medical Center institutions agreed to pay a $15 million settlement after three heart surgeons were accused of surgery violations.
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YHANK YOU to the whistleblower!! Those surgeons should be in jail!
Effing right! Go directly to jail AHOLES
Jail time medical license revoked
YHANKS! GOLF DAY!
Yep
He will not be able to do it again trust the system
These crooked surgeons need to lose their licenses, get locked up, and sued. This shouldn't be swept under the rug and should not have been settled behind the scenes. These doctors are always going against their oath to do no harm for the sake of their own greed, and need to be held accountable when they get caught because it's the rest of us who suffer under their negligence and malpractices.
If doctors are doing this imagine the amount of corruption and rubber stamps that are going on
Why do you hate the science?
Since it was already settled and based on the fact that in Texas you have two years from the date of an incident to file medical malpractice, it is unlikely anything happens (unless there are other cases pending).
All capitalist as crooked
Doctors typically do not take the oath to do no harm.
Why do those doctors still have their license?????
Because there's a shortage of cardiologists
Corruption, that’s the only answer.
Doctors always get off easy
They are the science
@@rondas77721) It's not like they were doing their jobs and 2) there are plenty of great cardiologists in places like Korea, China and India. They wouldn't mind coming here.
So they made $150 million and got fined $15 million. I guess it was worth it then. I’m sure they would do it again. It’s makes a lot of profit for them.
Right! Even if they do get sued ever year and settle they are looking at great profits!
Yikes
yes, at 10% it's just a cost of doing business which leaves the other $135M as untouched profit gained at the risk of people's lives
Right, and who knows if there were other doctors there doing the same thing and didn't get exposed. Really messed up system.
They don’t give two nickels about patients it’s all about the dollar
Capitalism is fun
That’s the sad world we live in.
The American way.
Hospitals are for profit companies
“Eat what you kill.” A business model in which employees are rewarded in proportion to the amount of revenue they generate for the business.
If the US government was indeed serious about fighting fraud and abuse in the system... then these surgeons, as well as all of the medical execs involved... should have their licenses revoked and face criminal charges!!!
conspiracy theory
Yes, I completely agree. The surgeons were allowed to do this because of the higher-ups. Too many people would've been involved for it not to have approved by management. From the schedulers double booking the surgeons, to the surgery team in the room with residents surgeons.
That is the definition of criminal fraud..I know a doctor who served 6 years in federal prison because his billing company billed for 43 patients a np saw as if the doctor saw them… ruined his life and these guys did something astronomically worse,imo
Pretty sure this qualifies for medical malpractice, insurance fraud, defrauding the government and quite possibly a dozen other crimes… yet the “serious government” settled for a slap on the wrist.
This is actually common, they’re called “ghost doctors”… similar to ghost writers, a well known surgeon will charge a premium but have a resident take over the surgery.
Baylor St. Luke’s Hospital. Stay away from this place.
Isn’t this where doctor death worked?
Stay away from any teaching hospital.
Stay away from all hospitals!
@@crazygeechee One of the places he worked.
dr death worked in Dallas metroplex at the Scott & White - Plano hospital no relation to the CHI Baylor St Lukes in Houston.
Dr death performed these surgeries from 2011-2013 and Baylor wasn’t merged with Scott & White health till after 2013. St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital before its acquisition by Catholic Health Initiatives in 2013 and subsequent co-ownership agreement with Baylor in 2014.
Do not settle, charge and jail them and fine the crap out the hospital.
That would take years. Top of that appealing would take 10 years+.
You people still have not learned the difference between civil and criminal court? Jesus
The staff that allowed this to happen should get in trouble too.
@@SLB765they can be bullied and /or ignored.
Being able to pay out without admitting guilt should be illegal for companies.
This is why settlements need to be based on a major percentage of profits or asset worth.
Only 15 million,shows how much they earn being worthless
Yep, it's all about the money. They made 150 million and only paid out 15 million.
I can guarantee yju we don not make 15 million in 30 yrs of practice. That’s what hospitals make. But yes the surgeons on st like and Methodist have been corrupt for a while. Nobody says a thing because they made the hospitals money.
Yep. They consider it "cost of doing business."
And we wonder why the Medicare Trust Fund is rapidly being depleted.
GREED & FRAUD.
Lawyers will take 1/3
Huh?! 😂
The structure of the system is the problem. The institutions need to be fined the 150 million dollars they made as well as taking the licenses of those particular doctors.
exactly, this is just a cost of doing business if they still get to keep the benefits of their misdeeds.
Exactly, the surgeons fudging records is a symptom of the problem- but not the actual problem.
150 million plus damages to the victims
The heart doctors working on patients' hearts who are heartless. Same goes to the hospital who allowed this to happen. Thank you whistle blower.
Good thing the whistle blower didn't work for Boeing
I was thinking the exact same thing... where was the good old federal government to protect those whistleblowers???
God bless and protect the whistleblowers. Amen!!
Give it some time. Scalpels!
@@MakaiMaukaHe’ll be found in his car, expired from self heart surgery?
You never know. This has been going on forever and just now came under the hot spot
Terrible. I wouldn't trust this hospital and i would investigate any deaths during that time frame. The whistle blower deserves that settlement for exposing such dangerous practices. Especially dangers of those extents.
Any teaching hospital!
Management and staffing should have never allowed it to happen. Go after them too.
Most teaching hospitals work this way buddy. You can chose to always go to a non-teaching private hospital for your surgeries.
If that whistleblower received that kind of money then there is a welcome sign hanging on the flood gates for many many more whistleblowers to walk through…Great idea pay the whistleblowers get the truth save humanity.
@@pixpusha If this was the norm they wouldn't have had to shell out $15 million.
This has been happening for years across the US. I remember when I was a surg tech and other surgeons would peek their heads in our OR and claim it as assisting...
You should have been Whistleblower…times was a little different, huh?
You're not supposed to question the experts
@@safeandeffectivelol Um, you are ALWAYS supposed to question anything that you feel is wrong, no matter who is saying/doing it.
I agree it should have been questioned. I was not afraid to speak up and no one listened. I quit as the work place became toxic. Lawyers will not help a nurse but are quick to help a physician. It is all about money and politics.
@@queenbee7749 If a doctor told you to jump off a building, you wouldn't do it? That doctor has over a decade of medical education and years of experience.
👏👏👏expose it all. All over America this needs to take place just like coding for billing of services. It happens and patients suffer.
Y'all the same people that said no to universal healthcare. But you want a doctor that makes 2 mill a year to do every single part of the procedure, like even putting simple sutures in. Make it make sense.
OMG, I wondered how many patients who suffered fatality because of these negligence.
For some some reason they aren't reporting on whether anyone was harmed. They also don't mention how little Medicare pays.
Several.
My issue with this story is that it took YEARS to develop the case. That means, during that time patients lives were at risk. I hope those families were compensated as well!
And how many surgeons were trained by these money-hungry idiots?
the us is starting to look like brazil by the day...
Not surprised - the residents do all the work, the attendings just submit the billing codes
I wouldn't want a resident operating on me unless they were on their final year of residency and still supervised!
@@joanfinholt7274majority of the time you won’t know a resident is working on you in the surgery suit until you are under.
@@joanfinholt7274good luck getting that. The original commenter is correct. Once you’re unconscious, you have no way of knowing who is actually operating on you.
@@joanfinholt7274That’s really the technicality of the story. Teaching physicians are allowed to supervise up to 4 residents at a time but must be present during the “key components of the surgery”.
As a former surgical assistant this happens a lot😢
so the doctors get off completely
baylor pays a small fine
and not much changes
Give him a trophy and the money. How dare those so called doctors take chances with the lives of their patients. They should loose their licenses.
its lose not loose. Read a book.
They aren’t being fined because they put patients at risk. They’re being fined because they defrauded Medicare
The amount of people that don’t know how to spell lose is astounding
@@scottybeck100those who miss content because of misspelling is your loss. Read the comment and reply who cares about spelling when it's clear you know what they meant.
Jail
Excellent reporting. These kinds of things are more common than it seeems, and rarely exposed.
only 15mil fine after 4 years when they "increased revenue by 150mil a year"
like a speeding ticket
OK, so technically they didn’t do anything wrong. Do I buy this? No, no Baylor you are guilty. We all know that this is probably just one of many hospitals doing the exact same thing.
What a shame even the ones we are suppose to trust more with our lives pure greedy.
If you book an appointment at a car dealership and the salesperson stacks two appointments in the same time window, you would be pissed too. but we are talking about surgeons
This is the second "bad press" for Baylor in a week. There's probably more to come.
I've always had faith in Baylor. This is disgusting!
@@SR71GIRL agreed
I'm glad that these 2 physicians lost their medical license in Texas, however they should be banned from practicing in the USA 🇺🇸 period!!! Please protect the whistle blowers 🙏❗️👍
This happened to me, not with heart surgery but with leg surgery. The surgeon dipped out early in the surgery and handed it off to an intern. My lawyer found that in the more then two inches thick of documents related to my experience, from the ER to the surgery.
Where I live, the doctor only is required to perform the first cut. Then, he hands off the operation to a physician's assistant- legally.
you mentioned all this before. see your above comment:(
Julie
Physician Assistants have no surgical training, do you mean a resident physician?
That’s really the technicality of the story. Teaching physicians are allowed to supervise up to 4 residents at a time but must be present during the “key components of the surgery”. They do not have to be present for opening and closing unless they consider those to be “key” or “critical” components.
I knew Dr. Coselli from 35 years ago when I worked at St. Joseph Hospital in Houston. I'm really surprised to see him involved in a mess like this.
Money can be an evil bitch.
The Love of money is the root of all evil. The extra millions he made Obviously destroyed his conscience and certainly his compassion, if he ever had any.
People change, I knew surgical residents who changed and they no longer know you once they are attendings.
@@sct4040their true colors came out. They think they are God but there is only One God.
@@kellykersten8828 truth
The Hospital admits no guilt. "These are just allegations."
But here's 15 MILLON DOLLARS, we're going to pay out BECAUSE.... we've done nothing wrong.
Okay cool....
So can I have like 100K too?
Since they're just handing out money for No Reason!
Criminals.
My mom had surgery once and later found out a different person had done the surgery. She should have sued I guess because she said her arm wasn’t right after the surgery. Not sure how she found out someone else had done the surgery.
The Drs have to login and sign off on after patient care. Plus nurses will blab.
That’s wild to think about. If you paid three surgeons six million total, but they brought in 130 million, just hire more surgeons and you’re still making a ton of profits…
Surgeons are hard to come by. Many years of schooling.
Yep & specialist surgeons as well it’s not that simple. That’s why they have teaching hospitals in the med center & fellowship programs.
Baylor is lying. They know.
Why did they accept settlement if they did not do any wrong???😂😂 laughable staff n admin at this hospital.
@@urbnwarz To avoid an expensive legal battle and additional press coverage. Also, $15M is a small price to pay for the $100M+ earned from those surgeries.
For a so-called religious school, Baylor appears to be after the dollars rather than be ethical. They can claim innocence all they want. I believe the whistleblower!
Did i miss something? Who was the benefactor of the $15m, besides the whistle-blower getting $3m?
I wondered the same…I guess it’s a fine so it goes to the government.
The government since they billed Medicare. They mentioned it in the beginning of the video.
Usually legal costs. These law firms will take on a case for a percentage of the final settlement amount, so you don’t have to pay legal fees up front.
The government gets it fines and then pays the whistleblower.
I worked with one of the named surgeons in the past, and this really surprises me. I never saw anything less than amazing care and unwavering concern for his patients.
Surprised this made it to the news.
Vid says Baylor made $150 million in revenue from those three questionable surgeons. The other two institutions likely also made a boatload of money.
If the settlement is just $15 million, how is this an effective punishment? It looks like little more than a slap on the wrist if they are allowed get such high revenue for a relative small cost.
Was the $150M gross revenue or was it profit?
And Baylor is responsible for pushing docs to do more surgeries. The hospitals are run like widget factories. My docs get paid for “production”. And they sweat those production reports every month.
ARE THESE DOCTORS STILL PRACTICING?? WHY!?
The epitome of FOR PROFIT hospital.
May God bless whistleblowers: Such Courage and Integrity. 💜
Make the other two have their license revoked!!!!! And don't think it's not happening at other hospitals. That's despicable!!!!!! And they all became wealthy from their lies 🤥 🤥🤥
My daughter dated a doctor for three months. He was so chivalrous and nice looking and was just starting his internship.
One evening she was at his apartment, cooking dinner, and he went in to take a shower .
His phone was laying on the counter. He never tried to hide it .
A text from a friend and fellow doctor came in and she could read it on the phone. It said
“That old bitty is still driving me nuts. Should I let her live or not?”
That was the end of the doctor .She said mom, all I could think of was someday, him, and his friend will be saying
“should I let my wife live or die?”😳
He definitely was a covert narcissist ! Super scary😢
If this story is true, I’m very disturbed that neither your daughter nor you reported that doctor. People like that don’t need to be in charge of anyone’s health. And if no action was taken by the hospital then at least there was a record incase something happened in the future.
@@lindsayo9702 actually she did say something to her supervisor.
He works at a different hospital, but last I heard there was conversation and people there are keeping an eye on him.
Maybe it was a joke …. But what people find funny says a lot about them .
nonstop cameras in OR's !!! watch every move
Doesn't surprise me. Doctors don't have a moral compass anymore.
Many doctors DO still have a moral compass. Stop lying.
A doctor with a moral compass delivered you.
Yeah seems to be a growing trend
Neither does the staff and management that allowed it to happen.
Lword, you’re wrong. Proportionately, physicians have painfully high moral compasses. Sales people, CEOs, senators. Congressmen, SCOTUS, many other professionals have far lower moral compasses and far lower dedication and education.
Good lord - There needs to be MORE observation of these Surgeons!!! All of this should be monitored more in EVERY MEDICAL FACILITY!!!
Are there cameras in operating room? We got them for red lights, school busses- maybe time to record operations.
Likely not because of patient privacy reasons.
@@LulaMae21 I get so impatient with that HIPA stuff. they share hospital rooms here on LI. I had not seen that in many years.
How over worked were these doctors? Hospitals administrations equal at blame
150 million dollars and all they gave 3 surgeons was 2 million each. Thats ridiculous
Alot of people don't know that the longer a patient stays sleep or monitored after surgery in the "recovery" they're being billed literally by the min. The hospital near me bills patients $58 dollars a minute! When you have surgery there are stages. Pre op (before surgery room) recovery area (wakeing up after surgery to be monitored by a nurse) then a phase 2 (can be in the same room as recovery or moved) obviously this is different depending on factors. Its crazy how much doctors get away with because they are under contracts instead of employee.
So much for looking up to doctors!!!!
2020 took care of that!!!
The revenue they made was so high, so how is their penalty so low? 15M is a small fee in comparison. And all 3 of the physicians who should have their licenses revoked at a minimum.
The patients should be awarded 15 million each
Just when you thought you had heard everything. That is unethical, dangerous and they should have lost their licenses.
This is unconscionable and horrifying. How could they even think about doing something so horrific?
Someone has to be honest and trustworthy
Greed is going to kill us all. 😡
This happens more often than people know. When you have surgery make sure you ask if there will be students or residents present and assisting.
But they made the hospital 150 million dollars???
This is so deeply sad, justice ⚖️ for all the patients
The hospital I work at doesn’t allow overbooking of surgeries. I use to set up surgeries & consents
The scheduler would alert us right away this couldn’t happen the system would reject the slot. It was only so many time blocks per day ( 2,4,6 hour slots)
These medical professionals need to go to prison.
they should investigate the C-suite executives pushing for higher volume and metrics and pressuring physicians and enticing them incentives
What, do they think they're DENTISTS? lol
You antii dentide ? 🤣
I'll never go there again.
Me either, never been there and never plan to be. If this is common practice for greed it is likely happening in every state, maybe every hospital. What ever happened to "First do no Harm"? Ye OLE Hippocratic Oath!!!
This won't change anything whatsoever. 15 mill is nothing to hospitals.
The doctor just earned his retirement from blowing a damn whistle 😂😂
This is awful. They should be in prison.
This happens much more often than most people believe. Senior surgeons hop from surgery to surgery and routinely have surgical fellows and even residents do most, if not all, of a surgery because of overly aggressive surgical scheduling. And it's certainly not limited to cardiothoracic surgeries, it's across ALL surgical specialties.
Makes me wonder during my surgeries was my surgeon really in the operating suite? Is this why I ended up with complications? Sad that the patient never really has a clue once they’re sedated…
Scary.
OMG, how could they let something so horrific happen all these years?!
What was horrific about it?
I saw this happen elsewhere. Senior resident surgical physicians who are at the end of their training, made to perform surgeries while the attending surgeon is managing multiple OR rooms. The impression I got is that this was VERY common, and a very old approach to surgical teaching programs going back centuries. When I observed it, it was also pretty clear that the attending surgeon hated it and it seemed forced on them by the hospital. I’ve also seen surgeons get fired for not doing enough surgeries. It’s a real thing.
Amen. They betrayed the patients . Blessings to the doctor for reporting.
What is wrong with people today!!? Sick
Just wait until these patients bring their suits. It’s not over yet.
Omgosh 😮😢
How is this allowed? No hospital oversight over surgery schedules??????
Only fifteen million?? This continues to make medical malpractice profitable. The pay off needs to be a couple hundred million, MINIMUM.
Reminds me of my neck surgery in Fl in 2019. I never once saw the neurosurgeon that was supposed to be operating on me. He was away at the hospital when his staff “knocked me out” with anesthesia and he was gone before I came to, slumped in a chair. He admitted to being the one who put the cervical collar on my neck while I was lying down, but it was not fitted correctly, so when I came to, my head was violently whiplashing. I ended up with torticollis and Horner’s syndrome, since he damaged my sympathetic trunk doing the incision. A home nurse came to take off my bandage and there was just a wound, purple marker, but no steristips over the wound. The whole things was deeply traumatizing. And my lawyers did nothing to hold him accountable. Too much loyalty to the doctors more than the patients. It’s a wicked world we’re in.
Good for the whistle blower.
Thank you for your bravery whistleblower!
I saw a Quincey episode about something like this. It’s scary
Quincy ME, that would scare you, a murder every week.
Thank you proffesor greed .............
Last year my husband was in the hospital for hernia surgery. While he was in pre-op, he overheard a conversation a doctor was having with a patient next to him. It was an old woman waiting to have a stent put in her heart. The doctor told her he had another emergency and could not perform the surgery, however he said my husband's doctor was a great doctor and she would do the surgery. After that my husband heard that surgeon having a conversation with my husband's surgeon, asking her if she could do it and if she had done the procedure before. She said no, she had only read about it. The doctor replied, "Oh, it's easy! You just go in through the left ventricle, etc." The reason the doctor wanted to leave is because it was a long weekend and he had plans with his family. Never heard the outcome for the other patient, but OMG. You have to wonder how often this happens.
The oversight is paramount and those should be held accountable
Why’s it always a Baylor hospital
How did these doctors not lose their licenses? How does Baylor still receive funding for Medicare patients?
Lucky for the residents that these doctors were so confident in them. I hope the patients are ok!!
Hospital board members need to realize MONEY IS DISPOSABLE PEOPLE ARE NOT
They need to start prioritizing healthy outcomes again instead of monetary gain
The hospital earned $150 million from from these cases and only have to pay out $!5 million. This is just a cost of doing business for them, not a deterrent from doing the same in the future.
Thank you
Unfortunately this is done more often than we know
When greed entered the healthcare system, ethics and do no harm exited. 😒
And let’s fire all the hospital CEO’s who undoubtedly pushed the surgeons to overwork “or else”
Take ALL their licenses.
I wonder if it was the surgeons or the hospital that was trying to make them do this
Y’all don’t have to sign to allow surgeons to have others in the room! My son has had two open hearts and made sure I did not allow residents in the operating room. My child is not a project or lesson. These hospitals are making millions off each surgery.
Money doesn’t help the people that desperately needed their heart surgeries! Dang!