The bad doctors

the

bad[ ] * DALLAS HAS SOME OF THE BEST DOCTORS. AND THE BAD DOCTORS ARE THE EXCEPTION, NOT THE RULE. BUT THAT DOESN’T HELP WHEN YOU’RE THE PATIENT OF THE EXCEPTION.

doctors

DENTISTS, HOSPITAL EXECUTIVES, SURGEONS, NURSES AND OTHER HEALTH CARE WORKERS (IN SOME CASES, THOSE IMPERSONATING THEM) ARE DOING TIME FOR DOING HARM

Story by CHRISTINA HUGHES BABB | Illustrations by JESSICA TURNER

In the 1870s, a bright young dentist — tall, lean, mustachioed and blonde, with a slight speech impediment and a nagging cough — opened his practice in Deep Ellum.

The lanky Georgia native Henry John Holliday had earned a doctorate of dentistry at 19 and won three awards, including best set of gold teeth, at a Dallas County fair.

But Doc, as he was known, had a dark side. Not only was he sick with a terminal illness, tuberculosis, but he also had a gambling habit. Thus, he would never become the doctor

he might have been. Like some other promising healers in this story (most of whom had far more formal medical training and credentials than our outlaw DDS), Doc Holliday would be remembered for less noble reasons. The law ran Doc out of town after a shootout at a Dallas saloon. He attempted several times to resume a dental practice, historians say, but his hacking concerned potential patients. He went on gaming and gunslinging until he died from his illness in Colorado in 1887. Dallas is home to substantial 24 lakehighlands.advocatemag.com JANUARY 2023 medical resources — Baylor Scott & White is the most awarded notfor-profit health system in Texas (U.S. News & World Report); we have the No. 1 scientific health care research institution at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center (Nature Index), the No. 10 overall hospital system in the nation (The Lown Institute) with Parkland Health and the country’s second largest Veterans Affairs hospital system.

But with so many doctors, clinics and hospitals, on occasion a bad actor violates his vow to do no harm.

Dr. Death

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dr. Christopher Duntsch became the subject of a Peacock original series for all the wrong reasons. He’s serving a life sentence for gross malpractice that resulted in two direct fatalities and the maiming of more than 30 neurosurgery patients, as told by Laura Beil, the journalist who hosts the Dr. Death podcast, on which the eponymous show is based.

Beil’s reporting was sensational and entertaining in a true-crime sense, but it served an important public service. It exposed a local health care system that allowed a dangerous doctor to move around to different hospitals rather than be scrutinized for his incompetence and, in some cases, willful destruction of patients’ health and lives.

It’s important to remember, Beil says, that this “pass the trash” phenomenon, where institutions transfer a destructive employee rather than deal with them, is not consigned to medicine.

Duntsch began his career at Baylor Scott & White in Plano, but after several of his surgeries ended in paralysis, permanent damage or death, as well as reports of him showing up to surgery inebriated, Baylor revoked his privileges.

“The one ‘Holy Cow’ I had, was when I learned from the [then] president of the medical board that, had [Baylor] properly notified them of what was going on … they could have suspended him on an emergency basis while they investigated,” she says. “If that had happened, there are people who died who would have still been alive, because he would not have been able to immediately go somewhere else.”

Duntsch performed several surgeries and mangled more patients at South Hampton Community Hospital (now University General Hospital). He sliced through a man’s artery during a surgery at Methodist Hospital, and he left the sponge he used to soak the blood inside the patient when he sewed him up, causing a horrific infection. Duntsch’s reign of terror, reportedly, ended after that operation.

As recently as 2021, his patients were still dying. Jerry Summers, a primary subject of the Dr. Death podcast, and Philip Mayfield both were left paralyzed with compromised immune systems and died from infections, according to what Summers’ lawyer and Mayfield’s wife told respective local reporters.

Beil’s podcasts reveal that often hospitals do not report problematic physicians to governing boards such as the National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB), which is intended to flag them, because of costs associated with fighting and possibly losing wrongful termination suits.

Beil, a resident of Southern Dallas County who has continued to report on deadly docs, says her stories are not meant to reflect negatively on the profession.

“The vast majority of doctors are good and caring people who want the best for their patients,” she says. In fact, they are the heroes in the Duntsch story because they filed complaints, made phone calls and testified against him.

“The thing you don’t want is to be the patient of the doctor who is the exception,” she says in one podcast episode. “We are limited in what we can find out about a doctor, but a skepticism of a doctor you don’t know is not a bad thing.”

If there’s an overriding good thing about getting this story out there, she says, it is that people will take that extra measure, to the degree that they can, to protect themselves.

In 2021, Duntsch became the first doctor to be convicted of a crime committed in the operating room during the act of surgery.

While awaiting trial, Duntsch was arrested trying to walk out of the Walmart at Northwest Highway and Skillman Street without paying for $887 worth of sunglasses, watches, ties, briefcases, cologne and a pair of pants that he put on in the dressing room, according to a Dallas police affidavit filed on April 8, 2015.

Dying for Curves

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woman known by her cli ents as Wee Wee operated a clandestine med spa in East Dallas where she offered black-market butt injections. In 2015, clients hoping to attain Kardashian-esque curves could ask for the “Wee Wee Booty,” and, 24 hours before their appointment, she would send them the address, 3800 East Side Ave. The amateur plastic surgeon, Denise Rochelle Ross (Wee Wee), and her assistant,

Alicia Clarke, used material that was not safe to inject into clients’ bottoms.

Wykesha Reid, 34, did not survive an injection of silicone caulk, which prosecutors said entered her veins, traveled through her heart and was trapped in her lungs. Reid died in the clinic after lying down, saying she felt unwell. Her injectors left her “to rest” overnight and discovered her dead the next day, when Clarke frantically called 911, according to court records.

In 2017, Wee Wee and her assistant, Clarke, were sentenced to prison for murder in two separate trials. They were not doctors, but were practicing medicine without a license, according to police and court documents; thus their malpractice amounted to murder.

Police documents show Wee Wee was arrested at an Oak Cliff address shortly after they issued a warrant. She was sentenced to 60 years. She was denied parole in 2020.

It is uncertain whether Wee Wee or Clarke administered the fatal injection. Each woman refused to testify against the other.

The dangers of pursuing the perfect rump are not relegated to the black market.

In 2017, a woman from Oklahoma, Rolanda Hutton, sued several cosmetic surgeons and nurses associated with the Dallas Plastic Surgery Center after she was left paralyzed following what she said at a press conference was a “botched Brazilian Butt Lift.”

The BBL procedure involves transferring fat from other areas into the buttocks. It’s both an in-demand and dangerous surgery, reports the New York Times. “The procedure has the highest mortality rate of any cosmetic surgery, but many women are undaunted,” the paper reported in 2021. In 2020 alone, there were 40,320 buttock augmentations, per the Aesthetic Society.

It’s common practice to move patients to unlicensed post-operative hotels after procedures — in Hutton’s case, The Cloister at Park Lane — but that is dangerous, her lawyers alleged. The defendants — doctors and nurses with offices in Lake Highlands, East Dallas and University Park among them — said, officially, that her claims are without merit.

Court records reveal no settlement reached at this time.

The Forest Park scandal

in 2014, a YouTube video went up showcasing a shiny new medical facility serving Dallas’ affluent, well-insured residents.

Located off Central Expressway between Preston Hollow and Lake Highlands, the gleaming five-level doctor-owned Forest Park Medical Center featured a luxurious lobby with fine art, modern furnishings and a two-story waterfall. A posh cafe and a Starbucks sat opposite a branch of Dougherty’s (a trusted high-end pharmacy and gift shop with a Preston Hollow store). Above bougie lounges were floors of doctors’ offices, state-of-the-art operating areas and commodious recovery rooms. Similar facilities emerged in Southlake and Fort Worth, and surgeons and specialists from all over Dallas can be seen in videos singing Forest Park Medical’s praises.

Seven years later, 14 people — the group’s managing partner, Wilton “Mac” Burt, a number of spinal and bariatric surgeons, a pain management doctor, anesthesiologists, nurses and a chiropractor among them — would be convicted in a bribery scam.

These individuals were sentenced to a combined 74 years in federal prison and ordered to pay a total $82.9 million in restitution (one of the largest ever medical fraud cases, according to the Department of Justice).

According to a report from the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the $200 million scheme was designed to induce doctors to steer lucrative patients — particularly those with high-reimbursing, out-of-network private insurance — to the now defunct hospital.

Hospital manager Alan Andrew Beauchamp testified for the government during his co-conspirators’ 2021 trial and pleaded guilty in August 2018 to one count of conspiracy to pay health care bribes and one count of commercial bribery. He admitted that Forest Park “bought surgeries,” and then “papered it up to make it look good.”

Beauchamp is serving 63 months (five-plus years) in federal prison. Burt, the group’s managing partner, was found guilty on 10 of 12 counts — one count of conspiracy, two counts of paying kickbacks, six counts of commercial bribery and one count of money laundering. Burt faced the stiffest sentence, 12 1/2 years. Other defendants received sentences that ranged from probation to 96 months.

Acting U.S. Attorney Prerak Shah said of the case that his staff was pleased with the harsh sentences, which issued a “strong deterrent message: Violate anti-kickback laws, and you will face consequences.”

Many good health care professionals worked at the hospital, and hundreds of patients reported their excellent experiences on sites like Yelp. No injuries or malpractice have been publicized in connection with this scam.

At the time, however, Shah said that allowing money to influence medical decisions puts patients in danger.

As the lawyer said following the 2021 trial, “Patient needs, not physician finances, should dictate where, when, and how patients are treated.”

The Novus Health Scam

In December 2021, two doctors and a nurse helped a local hospice agency to scam Medicare and were sentenced to a combined 23 years in prison. Their crimes put patients at risk and allowed non-doctors to distribute dangerous medicine, according to the U.S. Attorney for the

Northern District of Texas Chad E. Meacham. At least one of those docs, Laila Hirjee, treated patients right here in our neighborhood. Hirjee, who promoted her White Rock Trail practice on Google (now marked “permanently closed”), was convicted MEDICARE along with Dr. Mark E. FRAUD CASES SUCH AS THE NOVUS SCAM HIGHLIGHT THE IMPORTANCE OF Gibbs of conspiracy to commit health care fraud in their role as the medical directors at Novus

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FBI.EXCEPTION. vided a pre-signed blank prescription pad on which Harris and others ordered highly regulated substances, such as morphine, hydromorphone and fentanyl, at will and without physician oversight. “The doctors allowed Bradley Harris — an accountant with no medical expertise — to dispense controlled substances like candy,” Meacham said following the trial. “They claimed to have had hands-on experience with hospice patients, when in fact, they’d entrusted life-ordeath medical decisions to untrained businesspeople. We are satisfied to know they will spend the next decade behind bars.”

The Case of the Tainted IV Bags

in June 2022, anesthesiologist Melanie Kaspar was feeling unwell. So the 55-year-old doctor grabbed a bag of what she believed was saline IV fluid from the area surgery clinic where she worked, returned to her Lakewood home, got comfortable, and began filling her veins with the contents of the bag. A few hours later, she was dead. Investigators would learn that she died from toxic effects of bupivacaine, a local anesthetic that’s fatal when improperly administered. Investigators would also find evidence of the same drug in more IV bags at

the clinic and more patients suffering complications. Fortunately, those patients were in a hospital setting where they were saved from Kaspar’s fate.

Her fellow anesthesiologist, Dr. Ray Ortiz, was arrested in September, suspected of tampering with IV bags at the clinic.

Criminal allegations against Ortiz are not evidence nor proof of guilt, notes the Department of Justice in a press release. He is presumed innocent until proven guilty in court. Meanwhile, the Texas Medical Board has suspended his license.

As documented in court, clinic personnel identified more than 10 cardiac emergencies during otherwise unremarkable surgeries between May and August 2022, and exclusively when Ortiz was in the room.

Ortiz is charged with tampering with a consumer product and with intentionally adulterating drugs. If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of life in prison.

This isn’t the doctor’s first time in a courtroom. He was fined $3,000 in August 2022 in relation to a November 2020 incident in which a patient he was anesthetizing required resuscitation and emergency transportation to another hospital.

Ortiz also had relinquished medical staff privileges at North Garland Surgery Center for failing to disclose to the board a prior criminal conviction and arrest “for cruelty to a non-livestock animal,” according to the Texas Medical Board. In June 2016, a Collin County jury found Ortiz guilty of cruelty to an animal, for shooting and wounding his neighbor’s dog.

The motive, the jury decided, was retaliation after the neighbor testified against Ortiz at a protective order hearing and helped one of Ortiz’s domestic violence accusers escape his home. According to documents from the State Medical Board, Ortiz was arrested in 1995 over accusations of assault causing bodily injury to his former spouse.

The Pill Mill Doc

two Dallas physicians and several co-conspirators ran a medical clinic near White Rock Lake. But rather than a place of healing, it was a front for distributing dangerous and addictive drugs, said U.S. Attorney Sarah R. Saldaña following a 2014 trial in which one of the docs, Nicolas Alfonso Padron pled guilty to conspiracy to unlawfully distribute a controlled substance. District Judge Barbara Lynn ordered forfeiture of Padron’s house, two cars, a boat and several bank accounts, and sentenced him to 87 months in federal prison. That’s in addition to time Padron was already serving in an unrelated health care fraud case.

Along with co-defendant Jose L. Martinez, who was convicted in an earlier trial, Padron’s cash-only Padron Wellness Clinic amounted to nothing but a “pill mill,” a front for dealing opiates and benzodiazepine pills, Saldaña said.

The other co-defendants, including non-medical staff, were “dealers” who would recruit “patients,” often from homeless shelters, and drive them in groups to the clinic, the prosecution said at trial.

Sometimes, Dr. Padron would see two or more patients at a time in the examination room. He diagnosed the majority with lower back pain and anxiety without regard to their condition. Once Padron issued the prescriptions, the co-conspirators would drive groups of patients to Urban Independent Pharmacy on Samuel Blvd. to fill up on narcotics, most of which the co-conspirators would resell on the street.

The pharmacist, Lisa Hollier, also is serving time in prison for conspiracy to unlawfully distribute a controlled substance. In all, 17 defendants were convicted related to this pill mill case.

THE WAITING TIME

Lake Highlands grad produces final tribute to Bastards of Soul frontman Chadwick Murray

Story by RAVEN JORDAN

Eight months after the release of Bastards of Soul’s second album, Corners, a music video for a new song and preview from a pending documentary dropped.

Producer and creative director Paul Levatino, an East Dallas resident, produced the music video for the song, “It’s Gonna Be Alright,” dedicating it to late Bastards of Soul frontman Chadwick Murray’s wife, Hannah, and their son, Lennox.

Filmed from one of the band’s studio sessions, it was the last video Levatino filmed of Bastards of Soul before Murray’s death in September 2021.

“They wanted to go in and record that A and B side single, kind of true to the original kind of '60s sound that they were going for, that soul sound, which was different from the album Corners. It didn’t fit Corners, and it didn’t fit the other album and kind of had its own vibe.”

The band — Chad Stockslager on keys, Chris Holt on guitar, Matt Trimble on the traps and Danny Balis on bass — wanted to go for a retro sound, which is why they went with The Echo Lab to get what they were going for.

Over the course of the pandemic, they had recorded about three albums worth of songs, “It’s Gonna Be Alright” being one of them. It’s featured on a documentary that’s still in the works.

Page 30: Paul Levatino, left, and Chadwick Murray, center in car, in a behind-the-scenes take from “The Waiting Time” music video. Photo courtesy Matt Malaise.

Page 31: Bastards of Soul band and production crew. Photo courtesy Matt Malaise.

The band had gone back into the studio during the pandemic to record without pro tools or a computer but faced some difficulties, including lockdown and Chadwick’s health concerns.

“So, the thought was why don’t I bring my crew and film the whole process of that happening,” Levatino says. “During that, I started getting a bunch of different interviews, fly on the wall, kind of footage. And we never realized it was going to be the last pieces that we ever caught of Chadwick alive. I got interviews with the whole band and got some really special moments of him before his baby was born.”

After Chadwick’s death in 2021, it became difficult for Levatino to even look at the footage for about six months.

Levatino and Murray’s ties weren’t just work-based. Their bond stretched all the way back to halls of Lake Highlands Junior High, where they first met. The two went on to graduate from Lake Highlands High School. Levatino says he was the new kid.

“I moved here from Austin and didn’t have a lot of friends, but I was a drummer. And I guess through the grapevine, he heard I was playing drums. He came over and he asked me if I wanted to jam, I think we were 15 years old, and from there we became really close friends and stayed friends his whole life,” he says.

Though their careers took different paths in the span of those 30 years, Levatino and Murray remained close until his last days.

Currently, Levatino is executive creative producer for Pourri (formerly Poo~Pourri) and is behind the Flip that Funk campaign featuring RC & The Gritz and Black Joe Lewis. Plenty of his videos for Bastards of Soul and other creative work was done under his own label, PL Presents.

He’s also spent decades connected to the music scene, serving as manager for Erykah Badu’s Badu World for 10 years. She hired him originally to help her with production at the historic Forest Theater.

“Erykah is her own manager,” he says. “I oversaw her business at her direction, but I also oversaw for concert production. So, how that happened was we met backstage at one of her concerts. She started talking to me about my connections, marketing, and working with brands, music and film and she wanted me involved somehow.”

When asked where his creative journey began, Levatino draws back to Lake Highlands. Even though he grew up in Austin, he says the culture and diversity of Lake Highlands sparked his passion for the arts.