Posted on 05/25/2016 2:19:04 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Mario Guzman lived to race. For the last two decades Guzman ran in marathons, half marathons, and competed in multiple ironman triathlons. “It was a passion. It wasn’t a hobby, it was a passion,” Guzman said.
That all changed more than three years ago when Guzman went to the doctor after injuring his ankle during a run. “We were very puzzled about his symptoms,” said Ludmila Parada, Mario’s wife. “My husband has a fever, he feels very ill and the foot that was completely unremarkable the day before was all swollen and red and he couldn’t put weight on it.”
The doctor at Kaiser Permanente Santa Clara Medical Center treated Guzman for a sprained ankle and the flu, but it was later determined his symptoms were related to a common bacterial infection that Guzman believes could have been treated with antibiotics.
Guzman says he believes the misdiagnosis allowed the infection to spread and by the time he went to the emergency room, just three days after his original diagnosis, he was in septic shock. “It was horrible,” Parada said. “He ended up leaving the hospital as a multiple amputee, a quadriplegic.” Septic shock is the result of complications from an infection and can cause gangrene in the arms, legs, fingers, and toes.
Doctors ultimately amputated his right foot, his left arm, two fingers on his right hand, and all the toes on his left foot, leaving him confined to a wheelchair.
“It’s like they steal your life away from you,” Guzman said tearfully. kes that result in devastating injuries can keep practicing without facing any discipline.
Guzman and his wife tried going after Kaiser for medical damages, but lost their arbitration case. “We are confident the care provided was appropriate,” said Karl Sonkin, spokesperson for Kaiser Permanente. “This conclusion was upheld when the family unsuccessfully pursued their claim in arbitration, and the decision was entirely in Kaiser Permanente’s favor.”
The family then turned to the California Medical Board, the state’s consumer protection agency that was created to investigate and discipline physicians. An investigator with the Department of Consumer Affairs, which oversees the Medical Board determined the doctor’s “treatment fell below the standard of care.”
“It was like vindication for us,” Guzman said. “Here’s the proof. We were right all along.” That jubilation didn’t last. While the medical board made that determination, by law, it relies on the California Attorney General’s Office to pursue disciplinary actions against a doctor. The medical board hires their attorneys to take on disciplinary cases against physicians.
In Guzman’s case, the Attorney General’s office opted not to take any action. “They did nothing,” Parada said. The family received a letter from the Attorney General that said “the matter was closed based on insufficient evidence.”
Guzman’s doctor still has a clean disciplinary record and continues to see other patients.
State law requires lawyers from the AG’s office to work alongside the California Medical Board to determine which doctor’s should be referred to the AG’s office for possible disciplinary action. With this model, the AG’s office should be able to prosecute just about every case referred by the Board since its own staff helped move the case forward. “Not enough evidence is a strange thing to say at the end of the case when the lawyer has been involved from the beginning,” said Ed Howard, an attorney with the Center for Public Interest Law, which is a non-profit that acts as watchdog over California’s state boards and agencies. “If you have disagreements between the Attorney General and the medical board about what kinds of cases are worth bringing, that by definition means there is something screwed up.”
The executive director of the California Medical Board, Kimberly Kirchmeyer, acknowledges the two agencies can do a better job at working together. “As with any system there can always be improvement and we believe that there should be some in this model,” Kirchmeyer said. She recently recommended that her staff and lawyers with the Attorney General’s office undergo more team training in hopes of reducing the number of cases that the Attorney General’s office closes.
Guzman’s case is rare. Last year, the California Medical Board referrd 471 doctor complaints to the Attorney General’s Office, of those 27 were never pursued. “Once they get the full file in front of them and they start piecing everything together, they may determine that they can no longer meet that burden of proof,” said Kirchmeyer. “We do push back on cases,” While investigators may pushback, the Attorney General’s Office still has the final say on whether to pursue a case.
California sets a high bar when it comes to what kind of conduct legally constitutes disciplinary action for doctors. “Our burden of proof according to the law is clear and convincing evidence, so it’s a lot higher than what malpractice cases are,” said Kirchmeyer.
It’s also not enough for a physician to have committed one mistake. It has to be “repeated negligence” or conduct so egregious that it’s considered “gross negligence.”
The specific reasons behind the Attorney General’s decisions on whether to pursue a case are kept confidential so Guzman has no way of knowing why the Attorney General’s office never took action with his case. “It’s like a slap in the face,” said Guzman. “Not only did they do nothing, they don’t tell you why or give you your file.”
In a statement the Attorney General’s office said every case is conducted on its own merits, but wouldn’t comment on specific cases.
Feel so badly for this man. What Kaiser and the State of California conspired to do to him is shameful.
It took me exactly one visit to figure out that they made their money by NOT treating people. Or worse. Needless to say, I bailed at the first opportunity.
Naturally, I can't say what went wrong here, but my experience way back then taught me all I needed to know about the quality of socialized medicine in the USA.
Sadly, it is all going to be like this if ObaMaoCare remains.
Between a rock and a hard place here. Modern practice is a lot more parsimonious with antibiotics than a few decades ago when it would have been done just out of principle. Which is an opportunity for a problem like this to arise. The doctors play the odds according to the game they are told to play.
If less than 6 percent of the cases referred by the medical board aren’t pursued by the AGs office, the ones rejected must be pretty weak.
Immoderate behavior over decades caught up with him
Aristotelian moderation is always a good guide
He has the right kind of name, Mario Guzman, but his problem is that he must be an American citizen. Now if he was an illegal, Kaiser would be paying him millions.
It doesn’t say what kind of injury he suffered, from which this infection started — it sounds almost like a fluke case. And it ravaged his limbs, but no report of internal damage? Weird. It might not have taken a lot to show that “this case received the best practices known to medical science.” OF COURSE I hope that medical science would learn from cases like this, but you can bet that if they do, it is on the Q.T. lest they attract more lawsuits. That is one problem with an overly heavy hand of the law — it drives the treatment of doubtful cases out of the sunlight.
I belong to Kaiser SoCal..this is the way it is with Kaiser, if you have something simple they can help you, if you have something more complicated, or you are old forget about it you are basically on your own.
I do believe there is something called informed consent. He had to be talked into it. 2nd opinion too late?
In the 90’s I was with Kaiser in LA.
I liked it, quick visits on short notice to local offices, and good care at the downtown hospital when I needed a shattered elbow repaired.
After a 5 hour operation on a Saturday the elbow is still working well after 17 years...:^)
We switched after our other provider company shortened doctor visits by 5 minutes and caused backups in the waiting rooms, especially by the end of the day.
One has to wonder how many illegals were in front of him in the ER.....
I had to go with a friend to the ER recently, many many illegals there, clogging up the works...
Took us 8 hours to get ANY help....
I should have just sewed up her leg, but some liberal lawyer would have probably thrown me in jail for performing medicine without a license....
My dad has had a triple by pass, a partial colostomy and knee replacement at Kiasar. He was 79 when he got the knee surgery. My mother had lasik eye surgery at 80. Kiasar has been good to them.
In the early ‘80s my girlfriend found that out when her mother, insured by Kaiser, came down with lung cancer. Their entire POV was “how do we get rid of this patient as fast as possible?”
One of our local hospitals had an urgent care attached to it. You would see a triage nurse and she would put yo on the list for either the emergency room or urgent care. Worked like a charm. About a year ago I headed over to the urgent care.....it was gone. I was so sick I went ahead and signed up in the emergency room. I was so sick I couldn’t sit down and could barely stand up. When I started throwing up the security guard brought me a barf bag. After about an hour I still hadn’t seen anyone so called a friend to come get me and take me to a different urgent care. Was too sick to drive. Must’ve took her at least half an hour to get there so in over 1 1/2 hrs they hadn’t even talked to me to find out what was wrong.
While standing in the waiting room I watched people. They were all chatting, hitting the vending machines and running in and out to smoke. Maybe 3 people actually needed to be at a hospital er.
Illegal aliens use ER as primary care. And we pay for it.
Sounds to me like it might be MRSA. And it might not even be related to his original symptoms. Vancomycin is not something you’d expect a doctor to prescribe if someone came in complaining of having hurt their ankle running. But when someone is looking for a place to place blame....
Unless it is a gunshot wound or a car wreck with massive trauma, always head to a suburban ER in an upper middle class neighborhood where you have a good chance of being the biggest problem they deal with.
Sorry for this guys pain. Unfortunately medicine isn’t perfect. He was treated appropriately. Just because he had the one in a million oddity does not make it criminal nor civilly liable. Docs and nurses can only respond to symptoms. He had an ankle injury. He felt like he had the flu. He was treated for that
Maybe if he had gone back the next day instead of when he was in sepsis for several days he would have had a better outcome
No one conspired to do anything to this man
He delayed return. One needs o be proactive in ones own care. Docs and nurses can only go by what patients describe as their symptoms. Like going to the mechanic. If you tell them your car needs a tune up that’s what you will get. If you say I don’t know what is wrong they check further
His ankle injury he attributed to running. Bad move because it was probably the effects of the infection. He should have gone on saying I don’t know why I feel so bad
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