Patel’s disturbing record at Kaiser

Sunday, November 06, 2005, from The Oregonian:

SUSAN GOLDSMITH and DON COLBURN

Dr. Jayant M. Patel was a surgical star. Just three years after he was hired by Kaiser Permanente Northwest in 1989, the HMO gave him the job of training its young surgeons.

Patel gravitated to the toughest cases, confidently rebuilding colons and removing tumors to become one of Kaiser’s busiest surgeons. In 1995, fellow Kaiser doctors voted him a “Distinguished Physician of the Year.”

But there was another side to Patel’s work, one hidden from both his patients and many colleagues.

By the time Kaiser honored Patel, he had been involved in a string of problem cases, eight of which had prompted or would lead to malpractice or wrongful death lawsuits, an investigation by The Oregonian has found.

In four of those problem cases, Patel’s patients died. One young man was left impotent. An elderly woman lost a kidney and became incontinent. Yet it took Kaiser until 1998 to begin investigating Patel and five more months to bar him from surgeries on the liver, pancreas and colon. State medical regulators did not discipline him until 2000.

Between the time Kaiser lauded Patel and the time it restricted him, he performed scores of operations — including one in which an elderly patient bled to death after Patel severed an artery and vein during pancreatic surgery.

Patel resigned from Kaiser in 2001 and later surfaced at a hospital in Australia, where authorities are investigating his role in 13 patients’ deaths and asking how he got the job given his troubled background.

But Patel also slipped through the cracks in Oregon’s largely secretive system for spotting and disciplining problem doctors, The Oregonian found in reviewing his 12 years at Kaiser. His case highlights how hard it can be for patients to learn about a physician’s track record — and the risks that come with not knowing.

Because of confidentiality laws, patients have little opportunity to learn if their doctor is under investigation by a hospital or regulators. Patel’s case also exposes deficiencies in a state law requiring insurers to report malpractice claims, which regulators screen for possible negligence. Kaiser asserts it is exempt from the law, although state regulators disagree. It did not report claims against Patel or its other doctors from 1991 to 2004.

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Follow-up Tuesday, 11/08/2005, The Oregonian:

Kaiser must own up to malpractice claims – Dr. Jayant M. Patel was the one wielding the scalpel when he botched the surgeries of numerous innocent Oregonians. But his employer, Kaiser Permanente Northwest, was the hidden hand in every operation.