Posted on 07/05/2007 11:34:16 AM PDT by Bronco_Buster_FweetHyagh
The mother of a San Luis Obispo man who died after an attempted organ donation at Sierra Vista Regional Medical Center last year claims she never gave hospital officials consent to take her son off life-support and was misinformed when agreeing to the organ harvest, according to a wrongful death lawsuit.
Rosa Navarro also alleges in her June 29 civil lawsuit that a transplant surgeon misrepresented himself as her son’s doctor, an allegation the surgeon’s attorney strongly denies. She also said she agreed to the organ donation only because she believed her son had no chance of survival.
Defendants in the lawsuit — the San Luis Obispo hospital; its parent company, Dallas-based Tenet Corp.; the California Transplant Donor Network; transplant physicians Hootan Roozrokh and Arturo Martinez; and their employer, The Permanente Medical Group Inc.—are accused of assault, battery, fraud, civil conspiracy, negligence, medical malpractice and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
Sierra Vista hospital on Tuesday denied any wrongdoing in the Feb. 4, 2006, death of 25-year-old Ruben Navarro.
Rosa Navarro, 54, is asking for unlimited compensation in the death of her son.
Ruben Navarro, who was dying of a rare metabolic disorder, had been on life support for four days and was expected to die. His mother agreed to donate his organs, and the California Transplant Donor Network dispatched its transplant team to Sierra Vista.
Rosa Navarro said during an interview from her Oxnard home Tuesday that when she arrived at the hospital she asked about her son’s condition. She said a hospital nurse told her to speak with the doctor.
“He came over and approached me and said I’m in charge of Ruben,” Navarro said of Roozrokh, who was part of the surgical team from San Francisco dispatched by Oakland-based Organ Transplant Donor Network.
“I asked him, ‘Doctor could you do anything for my boy?’ and he said, ‘Oh, no. Oh no… There’s nothing I can do for a patient like him.’ ”
Navarro said through sobs that Roozrokh asked her if she planned to watch him disconnect her son from life-support.
“He didn’t even ask me, ‘What do you want me to do Ms. Navarro? Do you want me to keep him on the machine or whatever?’ ” Navarro said.
Roozrokh’s attorney, M. Gerry Schwartzbach, told The Tribune on Tuesday that his client never spoke with Rosa Navarro and was not in charge of her son’s medical care.
“He did not have any conversation with her with regard to taking Ruben off the respirator. … Dr. Roozrokh was in the Bay Area,” Schwartzbach said. “I feel very bad for Ms. Navarro because she’s going through a great deal, but unfortunately someone misled her because she never met (Roozrokh) and she never spoke to him. That is absolutely clear.”
Schwartzbach said a local physician made the decision to remove Ruben Navarro from life support.
Ruben Navarro was brought into the operating room at 11 p.m. Feb. 3, 2006, and his breathing tube was removed. But he did not die within 30 minutes—the window during which organs could be harvested. He died nine hours later, according to the lawsuit.
An operating-room nurse reported that standard medical procedures weren’t followed when Navarro was taken off life support.
The lawsuit alleges Roozrokh ordered Ruben Navarro be given lethal doses of morphine and Ativan, an accusation also reported as a finding in a federal investigation by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
The report showed an intensive care nurse gave Ruben Navarro 220 milligrams of morphine and 80 milligrams of Ativan.
Sierra Vista spokesman Ron Yukelson did not respond to specific allegations against the hospital.
He did say a surgeon contracted with the donor network assumed responsibility for Navarro in violation of hospital policy, which requires a doctor to be credentialed by the hospital to treat a living patient.
District attorney’s investigators have been reviewing the case since March, but have made no decision about filing criminal charges.
“It’s a very unique case. No one’s prosecuted a case like this anywhere,” Assistant District Attorney Dan Hilford said Tuesday. “The case is very complex and deals with issues that require a great deal of research and study.”
State Medical Board spokeswoman Candis Cohen said the agency is investigating Roozrokh.
Martinez, the other doctor on the transplant team, could not be reached for comment.
The doctors who harvest, and who reimplant the organs are compensated for the procedure, just like they would be compensated for performing other types of surgery.Nonsense. There are a very few who have a MONOPOLY on these procedures. They get WAY RICH off this. Their income DWARFS the average MD's.
How are you and your family going to manage to find a suitable match for the organ before it degrades to the point of being useless? are you going to make your decision based on need? Or are you going to auction off to the highest bidder?The organs are property, they ought to be owned by the estate and ANY profits ought to go to the estate. The current system is corrupt and evil.
How many “harvests” have you been in the OR for?
None. You?
Your wife is correct. Some on this thread sound like they get most of their medical news from the National Enquirer.
“Nonsense.”
no it isn’t nonsense.
The doctors who perform the surgeries are compensated for the surgeries, they are not compensated for the organs.
“The organs are property, they ought to be owned by the estate and ANY profits ought to go to the estate. The current system is corrupt and evil.”
what profits?
And do you think the doctors performing the surgeries should not get paid?
And the people who run the database to match donors/recipients should not get any money or resources?
How are families going to manage to pull it off on their own in your opinion?
What is your expertise in all this?
“eBay auction sounds good. With a Buy-It-Now clause, and prepaid surgery fees included for the extracting physician.
Of course, you’d need a photo gallery of hi-res photos of the organs for buyers to inspect for diseased appearance, irregularities, etc. Probably need some kind of organ grading procedure to determine the overall health, age of organ, etc”
well there ya go! that oughta do it!
“There are too many on this thread who are wearing tin foil hats who know nothing about this topic. They watch science fiction movies and think they are documentaries. I am sure they think Dr. Frankenstein was a transplant surgeon.”
according to some here my brother-in-law is a butcher/monster who has a monopoly on harvesting and is getting WAY RICH off it.
I know this not to be true.
So you think the people who need organs should die too? I’ll bet you’d be singing a different tune if you needed an organ transplant.
Over the past several years this has been shown time and again. There are many cases where the rules were broken repeatedly and those standing in line were left out in the cold.
“There are many cases where the rules were broken repeatedly and those standing in line were left out in the cold.”
documentation?
I thought I was pretty clear, any liberal that wants part of me is going to die waiting.
“I thought I was pretty clear”
Whatever you say.
“any liberal that wants part of me is going to die waiting.”
OK.
Does that mean you simply don’t wish to donate at all?
In that case - are you willing to turn down organs if you need them?
Or...are you saying a potential recipient needs to fill out a questionaire of your making that would identify them as a potential liberal?
They get paid MONOPOLY rates -- WAY beyond the value of standard surgical rates. Since they cannot "sell" the organs, they rigged a government controlled monopoly. I have friends in the area of surgical anesthesiology who have reported the glee withg which these ghouls treat the dismemberment of living human beings for profit.
+
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Mengelian arguments are evil.
Why wait, if you can speed it up? They’re going to die sooner or later. Dying sooner saves worthy lives. If you wait a day or two for the donor to die on his/her own, the recipient is unjustly inconvenienced. Or so I keep hearing.
90 seconds on google finds these two examples (and many more):
http://www.cbs8.com/story.php?id=67580
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/07/29/health/main565578.shtml
One patient at the University of Illinois Medical Center who was certified as seven days from death was discovered in a hospital lobby wearing a clown costume and putting on a show to support a blood drive, officials said.Some patients were unnecessarily placed in intensive care and were diagnosed as far sicker than they were, officials said.
“They get paid MONOPOLY rates — WAY beyond the value of standard surgical rates.”
oh really?
And you know this...how?
“Since they cannot “sell” the organs, they rigged a government controlled monopoly.”
Again...you know this how?
“I have friends in the area of surgical anesthesiology who have reported the glee withg which these ghouls treat the dismemberment of living human beings for profit.”
Have your friends reported the ghouls?
And because your group of friends have passed this information on to you...does this mean this is what is happening in every OR across the nation?
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