Should doctors be checked for competence as they age, as elderly drivers are? A negligence case involving a 75-year-old obstetrician raises some tough questions.
By the time the San Gabriel police caught up with Dr. Lars Hanson, he was half-naked, locked in his car and refusing to answer questions about a patient who had been sent to the ER from his unlicensed abortion clinic. So why is he only getting a slap on the wrist from California's medical board?
How one doctor could allow another doctor to use his license to order painkillers for a clinic being used as a front for a drug mill and still be allowed to operate with no restrictions on his license is a true mystery. Finally, William Heisel reports, Dr. Scott Bickman faces some sanctions.
One year after Dr. Andrew Rutland was accused of killing a woman while trying to perform an abortion, the troubled doctor with a long history of hurting patients has agreed to give up his license.
In March, Antidote launched a series called The Shadow Practice that reported on a network of shady physicians operating below the radar of most state and fed
At what age is a woman no longer at risk with a doctor who has been disciplined for “inappropriate conduct” with female patients?
The Louisiana State Board of Medical Examiners sets the age limit at 60.
The Medical Board of California told Orange County Register health reporter Courtney Perkes that it was rare for a doctor to be disciplined, allowed to return to practice and then disciplined again. She wanted to see if that was actually true, and so she asked the board for every record of a doctor who had petitioned for a license reinstatement.
My friend Christopher Farnsworth recently published a book called Blood Oath. It’s about a vampire who works for the president. After a reading he gave last week, I asked him, “Knowing that you are only one book into a three-book deal, why did you decide to put Frankenstein, werewolves, a vampire and zombies all in the first book?” He said, “It’s the Jack Kirby school of writing. If you have it, put it all in.”
Courtney Perkes could have phoned it in. She was the fourth reporter to have covered the seemingly never-ending saga of Dr. Andrew Rutland, an obstetrician who, most recently, has been accused of botching an abortion that led to a woman’s death. A story that requires a lot of “the Register reported in 2001” sentences can quickly become an exercise in burnishing boilerplate. But Perkes took a different tack. She used the Rutland case to ask an important question: how often do doctors like Rutland lose their licenses, only to get them back?
When word hit the grapevine that the Madre Maria Ines Teresa Health Center in Santa Ana had prescription painkillers for the asking, the place couldn't keep them in stock.
