Law Med Blog

Dental Practice Faces Lawsuits Over Patient Sexual Assaults By CRNA

May 13, 2012 lawmed 5 Comments

Dental practice faces suits over videotaped sexual assaults

By Christopher Seward

A pair of civil lawsuits have been filed months after a Cobb County nurse anesthetist was sent to prison for sedating female dental patients awaiting surgeries and sexually assaulting them as they lay unconscious.

Paul Patrick Serdula, who was sentenced to life plus 25 years, also videotaped his assaults on the patients, among them a 15-year-old girl.

The parents of the teenager and another, adult patient filed lawsuits this week against Goldstein, Garber & Salama LLC, the Marietta dental practice that performed the surgeries and hired Serdula to administer the anesthesia.

Efforts were made Friday to obtain comment from Goldstein, Garber & Salama and Drs. Maurice Salama and David Garber, who are named in the lawsuit.

“If you can’t be safe in an operating room where they are permitted to render you totally unconscious, … (Continued…)

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Mountain State Univ Officials Meet With HLC Over Accreditation

May 08, 2012 lawmed No comments

Mountain State University officials met Monday in Chicago with five trustees from the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools to present the school’s case for continued general accreditation of the university as a whole. This follows an Order to Show Cause as to why accreditation should continue and a site visit from the HLC. The HLC will determined MSU’s fate at a June meeting. If continued accreditation is denied the future of the university continuing to operate is grim.

Interim President Dr. Richard Sours presented changes the school has made to address concerns the commission had regarding governance, leadership and faculty, as expressed in its June 2011 Show Cause Order said Dr. Jerry Ice, president of the Mountain State University Board of Trustees. Sours, supported by a group of officials, including Chief Academic Officer Dr. Roslyn Clark-Artis, made the presentation to the commission. “He … (Continued…)

Supervision Of CRNAs Does Not Create Liability For Surgeons

April 05, 2012 lawmed 8 Comments

By Greg Stocks, The Law Med Blog

While any author certainly prefers that the reader take the time to read his or her work in its entirety, for those who want a quick answer without the evidence and law explained, here it is: Surgeons do not expose themselves to greater liability when they work with Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetists (CRNAs) alone vs physician anesthesiologists alone. Regardless of what anyone might tell you to the contrary, the courts and the case law are unambiguous and very complete on the matter. But don’t just believe me, read on for the irrefutable facts based in law.

It is worth noting from the outset that due to the incredible record of safety which the administration of anesthesia enjoys (so safe that it is the envy of every other medical and nursing specialty in this regard), concerns from surgeons over their liability exposure for anesthesia … (Continued…)

Ex Texas Nurse Guilty Of Murdering 5 Dialysis Pts With IV Bleach [VIDEO]

April 03, 2012 lawmed No comments

Huffington Post

Kimberly Saenz, Ex-Nurse Gets Life In Prison For Killing 5 With Bleach

By MICHAEL GRACZYK

LUFKIN, Texas ~A former Texas nurse convicted of killing five dialysis patients by injecting them with bleach should spend the rest of her life in prison with no chance of parole, jurors who earlier convicted the woman of capital murder last week said Monday.

Kimberly Saenz was convicted Friday of killing the patients at a clinic run by Denver-based health care giant DaVita Inc. She also received three 20-year terms for aggravated assault in the cases of five other patients who were deliberately injured at the facility in East Texas.

Jurors spent about 45 minutes deliberating before returning with a decision on the punishment. They also could have recommended that Saenz receive the death penalty.

“I was hoping for the death penalty but I’m all right,” said Wanda Hollingsworth, whose mother was among … (Continued…)

MSU Enrolled Anyone With A Pulse For The Money, Fired Non Pulse-Taking Recruiters

April 02, 2012 lawmed No comments

We first turned our attention to West Virginia’s Mountain State University when a former student in their then probationed and now defunct school of nurse anesthesia. Christy Brewer filed suit in Federal Court in the Southern District of West Virginia July 5, 2011. Brewer completed the Spring, Summer and Fall 2007 semesters without ever receiving a syllabus for any class despite requesting one on multiple occaisions. Her requests for graded results of exams were denied. After completion of the Fall term she was told she that she had failed a pharmacology course by 0.2% points, despite not having been counseled that she had any performance issue in the course, per university policy. What followed, according to Brewer, was a bizarre course of events, well worth the read, which we reported in detail HERE.

At the time we had no inkling of the true mess that was, and is, the … (Continued…)

The Verdict Is In California: CRNAs Don’t Need Supervision

March 22, 2012 lawmed 1 Comment

Our friends at The Verdict Is In over on Medscape Connect have published this piece on the court battle occurring in California over the Medicare CRNA supervision Opt-Out signed by then governor Schwartzenegger. It was spawned by our earlier story on the subject and a recent dialogue between our two sites on the topic of HIPAA privacy rule violations and private civil actions for inappropriate release of private medical information. The Verdict Is In is written by an orthopedic surgeon who also went to law school and, likely in a fit of ‘I haven’t done anything with my life to this point so I better get off my ass’, then obtained a graduate degree in Quantum Mechanics and Computational Chemistry. (Law Med’s excuse is that he is a Gemini, and no Gemini worth his salt could be satisfied with just practicing anesthesia, so he went to law school ‘for fun’. … (Continued…)

LPN Sues Mountain State Over Accreditation

March 07, 2012 lawmed No comments

Another Mountain State University nursing student has filed suit against the university over their failed nursing school claiming the institution misrepresented the program’s accreditation status when she applied.

Amy C. Pack’s lawsuit claims that the National League for Nursing Accrediting Commission had already notified former MSU President Charles Polk of the problems by the time she applied, and it sent him a second later two years later with the decision to deny continuing accreditation. The lawsuit goes on to claim that Pack wasn’t told about a pending investigation by the West Virginia Board of Examiners for Registered Nurses into problems at the nursing school. The board revoked the nursing program’s accreditation in February, effectively ending the program.

This is just the latest in a string of lawsuits filed by former students. Last November a number of Bachelor’s of Science in Nursing students sued MSU on similar grounds. … (Continued…)

Settlements Reached In 41 Las Vegas Hepatitis C Lawsuits

February 22, 2012 lawmed No comments

Clark County District Court Judge Jennifer Togliatti has approved settlements involving Teva Parenteral Medicines Inc. and other companies after nine days of negotiations which were brought about by a Nevada Supreme Court order. The state high court dubbed the talks a “global settlement conference.”

Terms of the settlements were not immediately made public, however Denise Bradley, a spokeswoman for Teva, said the Israel-based pharmaceutical company had set aside $285 million to pay its share of the final agreement. “Teva is pleased to have put the vast majority of these matters behind us,” Bradley said, adding that the company still has 15 more cases pending in Nevada courts.

The ‘group’ settlement is reportedly one of the largest in Nevada history and averts countless hours and untold millions spent in litigation. The load on the judicial system of Clark County just got significantly lighter. Cases included in the settlement include a Teva … (Continued…)

Higher Learning Commission Wraps 3 Day Evaluation Visit At MSU

February 17, 2012 lawmed No comments

An accreditation review team from the Higher Learning Commission (HLC) completed a 3 day site visit of embattled Mountain State University (MSU) this week says acting MSU President Dr. Jerry Ice. Ice addressed MSU students and faculty at a forum on Wednesday telling them “You are a big credit in where we are in the success I want us to continue to have.” Ice took over the helm at MSU last month after President Charles Polk was fired by the board of trustees. MSU was ordered to show cause why accreditation should not be withheld.

The process leading up to a decision by the HLC, which will ultimately lead to the approval or denial of accreditation of MSU and the survival or potential demise of the institution is as follows: The HLC will submit a draft of its report to MSU by March 19. MSU will then be given until … (Continued…)

Nurse Pleads Guilty To Propofol Murder Of Stepfather

February 12, 2012 lawmed No comments

In Dekalb County, Al, prosecutors say 32-year-old Karri Denise Willoughby siphoned money away from her stepfather, Billy Shaw’s, account and stole her mother’s identity for financial gain. When her theft was discovered her access to the accounts was cut off and in response she murdered Shaw they say. On Wednesday, the day after a jury was seated and the morning her trial was to begin on capital murder charges, Willoughby agreed with them and pleaded guilty to a lesser count of murder. She has been sentenced to 20 years.

It was first thought that in 2008 Shaw died of a heart attack. A year later his body was exumed when toxicology results revealed a high concentration of propofol in his blood stream at the time of death. Also found were the drugs vecuronium and succinylcholine, powerful paralytic drugs used in surgery. Willoughby worked as a registered nurse at a Chattanooga, … (Continued…)

President Of Floundering Mountain State Univ Sacked By Board

January 22, 2012 lawmed No comments

In 2009 he was nearly the highest compensated university president in the country, raking in nearly $2M in salary and other perks. Not bad considering he arrived at West Virginia Mountain State University (MSU) in in 1990, after resigning as president of Daytona Beach Community College in Florida amid an investigation by the Florida Ethics Commission.It was alleged that he had violated Florida law for having a contractual relationship with a real estate developer who was doing business with the college. In 1991, the Ethics Commission found that Polk did violate Florida law recommending he be publicly censured, according to the Ethics Commission case report. Charles H. Polk, the longtime president of beleaguered Mountain State University, was fired Wednesday night by MSU’s board of trustees. The move does nothing however. The university’s fate is already sealed and rests in the hands of the Higher Learning Commission. The time for a … (Continued…)

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