VEGAS INC Coverage
How much do you know about your doctor? Maybe not much. Perhaps you’ve gone online, checked malpractice records, even the state medical board website. You could still be in the dark. How? Critics complain laws protect doctors. That may be true. But, more importantly, the board charged with regulating doctors too often gives them a pass.
A recent study by the national watchdog group Public Citizen says the Nevada Board of Medical Examiners failed to take action on three-quarters of the hospital sanctions against doctors forwarded to the board during the last 20 years. Unless the board files its own complaint, the public never knows of the sanction. So for the last two decades Nevadans have been unaware 75 percent of the time health care institutions have seen fit to sanction staff doctors. And that doesn’t count thousands of grievances filed by the public, which often disappear into a regulatory black hole.
Case in point: Chris Roe was 15 years old when Las Vegas pediatric oncologists Ron Oseas and Jonathan Bernstein diagnosed him with leukemia in January 1999. After a week of treatment a bone marrow test revealed the cancerous cells in Roe’s blood had decreased from 92 percent to under 25 percent, the threshold designating him a rapid early responder to treatment, the best prognosis possible. His cancer cell count plummeted to one percent by the next test. Remission. But the Roes’ celebration was short-lived. Two months later the symptoms that led to the diagnosis had returned. And so had the cancer.
What the Roes did not know but the doctors did was that Chris had never been a rapid early responder. The doctors recognized the error just days after misinforming the Roes of Chris’ prognosis. Astonishingly, they informed no one and failed to change Chris’ treatment protocol, which would have included potentially life-saving cranial radiation.
The Roes took their son to the Mayo Clnic in a last-ditch effort to save him. It failed. Chris Roe fought to stay alive until his 16th birthday in October, dying moments after midnight. While at Mayo, Chris’ doctor gave Sue Roe a page from her son’s Las Vegas medical records. He told her to read it after she got home.
Weeks after her son’s death the nurse and mother read the document, Chris’ true test results. She felt betrayed by her own profession, believing her son’s best chance at survival had been robbed from the family by doctors paralyzed by the fear of admitting and correcting their mistake.
The Roes sued Bernstein and Oseas. A screening panel in existence at the time found no cause to proceed agaisnt Bernstein, who claimed he was deferring to Oseas, the lead doctor on Chris’ case. Oseas died before the case went to trial. Bernstein took the stand, admitting he knew of the mistake and asked his colleague three times if he had informed the patient and parents. He seemed remorseful, adding his failure to inform the family was a mistake he would have to live with.
The Roes filed complaints with the state medical board. Sue Roe says then-lead investigator Doug Cooper, now the executive director, told her the board is educational, not punitive and accepted Dr. Bernstein’s “captain of the ship” defense.
Bioethicists say no such defense exists. All medical professionals have an ethical obligation to acknowledge and correct mistakes. But in a 2008 study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, more than half of all doctors admit to covering for colleagues.
Cooper will not acknowledge the investigation, although we’ve obtained a confidential memo confirming the board’s reviewer found malpractice on the part of Dr. Oseas but none on Dr. Bernstein.
Cooper maintains the board would not buy such a defense nor has it ever been presented. But he refuses to say what treatment Bernstein provided his patient that Oseas did not. Cooper also told his bosses on the board who we didn’t ask questions before reporting this story. We provided a chain of a dozen e-mails to disprove that claim. Fact: Bernstein has no public record of discipline by the board, despite taking the stand and admitting he did nothing to correct treatment he knew fell below the standard of care.
Doctors are human and mistakes are inevitable. But sweeping medical errors under the carpet is reprehensible, especially when a potentially life-saving correction is at hand.
The jury that awarded the Roes $400,000 indicated on the verdict form that from the evidence presented at trial Chris Roe had a 60 percent chance of survival before the treatment. Given the treatment he received, the jury pegged his chances at just six percent.
So much for doing no harm.