Let me guess. Lancaster, PA?
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.
And the clint eastwood movie, “bloodwork”.
“You jerk. I hope you never ever need to have a kidney transplant. Try spending the rest of YOUR life on a dialysis machine, you fool.”
Or, try answering at the Judgment Chair for your role in murder out of a selfish desire to live at the expense of another human being’s life. BTW, name calling is both against the rules and a poor reflection on your character.
So instead of denying the facts you want to play word games. What makes you so defensive? A hubby who gets rich on this?
No, they make bucks off of saving people with the donated organs.
“Mengelian”??? So I’m a Nazi for stating that organ transplants have saved thousands of lives? You just showed the world what a POS you are. You’ve got some bad karma in your future.
bump!
sadly it is incidents like this and other anecdotal experiences which make the organ donation process rife with machiavelian death stalkers and give people every right to be suspicious.
I have seen doctors too eager to pull the plug for organ donation when the insurance seems to run out.
Once you are past 30 years, they typically don’t want your organs for anything but medical school disections. You can further decrease your organ attractiveness by taking up smoking and use of illegal narcotics.
I ride a motorcycle. I don’t smoke or use drugs. But sometimes I tell them I smoke cigars occasionally, just so they don’t get too greedy with my organs.
I suspect this poster is a fiction writer who watches a lot of bad medical shows on TV, and his “friends” are imaginary.
See http://www.transplantbuddies.org/tbx/messages/9/8260.html?1168458984 for a few of the facts that you want to deny.
Organs are “harvested” from living people. In all too many (and well documented) cases, the medical establishment has KILLED patients to get the high-value organs. It is Mengelian. Sorry if that bothers you. Murder bothers me.
Or maybe you want to hide from the well documented facts here. Why? What stake have you in the organ market?
Old sick people’s organs are useless. They can claim to be organ donors, but it’s a meaningless gesture. Since these old sick people are likely to be the ones recieving organs, your concept for organ recipient qualifications doesn’t make sense.
All those articles said was there are not enough people generous enough to donate their organs for all the people who need them.
Being called names by the likes of you bothers me, especially when your stories are total lies.
The articles are interesting and certainly reveal weaknesses in the system, however I don’t see proof of charges I’ve seen on this thread that people are buying organs.
Rather - it appears they are in short supply, and people are playing loosy goosy with the current rules to get their patients names bumped up.
The articles point out problems with the matching process being too slow. Why? In one situation it was described that a hospital didn’t have a transplant surgeon onsite.
Certainly a designated program ought to have a surgeon!
And that is a different charge than claiming huge profits are being made - or organs are being bought and sold.
It was pointed out doctors will exaggerate how severely ill a patient is to bump them up on the list.
The same article also exposed them for their fraud and detailed the fines they received.
So it seems what we have here is failure in the beaurucratic nature of the current system.
Should the current system be reformed or ditched?
If they enforce their own rules - they may see the waiting time decrease and fewer people will die while waiting.
Or - you could completely ditch it all....for what?
Do you have practical solutions?
Let me guess. Lancaster, PA?
You’re a nasty piece of work. Here’s hoping you’re in need of a transplant some day soon. You’ll probably fly to China to buy black market organs.
don’t need to go through the wallet, if you are identified in an accident and you were foolish enough to signe the organ donor card on your license, your name is in the database.
Plus hospitals treat EVERYONE as an organ donor unless there is known family present.
Sorry but hospital motives are not pure as the driven ssnot.
“So instead of denying the facts you want to play word games”
I have no idea what you are talking about.
“What makes you so defensive?”
Again...I have no idea what you are talking about.
“A hubby who gets rich on this?”
LOL!!
I’m sorry - for a moment I thought I was having a discussion with a reasonably intelligent person.
I now see the error of my ways.
Adios.
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