A month of surgeries in two days.

[The Man]

So an orthopedic surgeon in my area was racking up about half as many operations in a day as his peers did in a month.

http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/...ds-Spyros-Panos-averaged-surgeries-17-per-day


According to the suit filed by some patients the medical group he was a member of failed to take notice of the signs that he was putting a bit too much ‘elbow grease’ into his elbow surgeries as well as warnings from its employees about his practices.

So opinions, remarks, jokes or whatever. Should the medical group have been more active in its oversight? Are having such limits on the number of procedures over a particular period common place? What tools do perspective patients have to find out how well ‘booked’ or potentially ‘overbooked’ a particular surgeon may be?

 

[rjh01]

One obvious question is was the surgeon actually doing all the ops? Other possibilities
1. Others were doing some of the ops and it was all going though under his name.
2. He was only performing minor operations
3. Fraud. Claiming he did operations when he was not doing so.

 

[The Man]

One obvious question is was the surgeon actually doing all the ops? Other possibilities
1. Others were doing some of the ops and it was all going though under his name.
2. He was only performing minor operations
3. Fraud. Claiming he did operations when he was not doing so.

Good points, though I think that if he is on the log for the operation it is suppose to be him that did it. Unfortunately, the logs obtained don't show what the procedures were but hopefully that will come out in discovery. Since at least part of the suit is that he didn't do anything, in some cases (and in others made things worse), fraud is what is being alleged.

Charging people (or insurers) and not doing anything or making things worse, that's suppose to be alternative medicine. Though that's just my knee-jerk reaction.

 

[The Man]

Looks like the state board ordered him to surrender his license and he has complied (still has a license in Virginia).


http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/...s-surrender-medical-license-lawsuits-continue

 

[CMRTIXPS57]

It's always a mess when surgeons get sued because usually so many factors go into why the law suits occurred.

Good points, though I think that if he is on the log for the operation it is suppose to be him that did it. Unfortunately, the logs obtained don't show what the procedures were but hopefully that will come out in discovery. Since at least part of the suit is that he didn't do anything, in some cases (and in others made things worse), fraud is what is being alleged.

Charging people (or insurers) and not doing anything or making things worse, that's suppose to be alternative medicine. Though that's just my knee-jerk reaction.

It depends a bit on if he supervises surgical trainees too. Depending on the procedure, surgical registrars may be happy to start a case for him while he finishes up in another room. Since they are technically still his patients, his name will obviously be put down. This might explain why he has multiple patients under anaesthesia at the same time.

As to him not actually doing anything. Well that remains to be seen I think. If he really did nothing then that's obviously terrible. But if he just did say a joint steroid injection and the patient complains he didn't do enough to relieve the pain then that's a different story.

The problem in all these cases is that we don't know enough of the circumstances.

edit: As an aside the case certainly illustrates how important it is to keep good medical notes!

 

[The Man]

It's always a mess when surgeons get sued because usually so many factors go into why the law suits occurred.



It depends a bit on if he supervises surgical trainees too. Depending on the procedure, surgical registrars may be happy to start a case for him while he finishes up in another room. Since they are technically still his patients, his name will obviously be put down. This might explain why he has multiple patients under anaesthesia at the same time.

As to him not actually doing anything. Well that remains to be seen I think. If he really did nothing then that's obviously terrible. But if he just did say a joint steroid injection and the patient complains he didn't do enough to relieve the pain then that's a different story.

The problem in all these cases is that we don't know enough of the circumstances.

edit: As an aside the case certainly illustrates how important it is to keep good medical notes!

Indeed, particularly the edit.

We can only hope that more information comes out in the discovery and certainly the types of procedures (like just a cortical steroid injection) can determine that quite a lot of them can be done in a day without cutting corners.