By Miles Moffeit
mmoffeit@dallasnews.com
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Baylor Regional Medical Center at Plano
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A federal lawsuit is accusing Baylor Health Care System of failing to properly monitor or investigate a Plano neurosurgeon – recently barred from practicing in Texas – despite repeated warnings about his “drug problem” and “lack of competence.”
Baylor Regional Medical Center at Plano didn’t seek Dr. Christopher Duntsch’s resignation amid months of botched spinal treatments until one of his patients died in March 2012, according to the suit.
Then the hospital gave him a “letter of reference” that allowed him to go on to harm patients at other Dallas facilities, it says.
The malpractice case was brought by Kenneth Fennell of Denton County. He claims Duntsch harmed him and several other patients over a nine-month stretch beginning in July 2011. Among the worst outcomes alleged: a woman who bled to death, and Duntsch’s “lifelong friend and roommate” who was rendered a quadriplegic. Duntsch performed an “unnecessary surgery” on Fennell, 68, operating on the wrong body part, the suit says.
The lawsuit portrays Baylor as embracing Duntsch for “the enormous profits it hoped to reap.” The health system recruited him, helped establish his practice at a spine institute with a $600,000 advance and tens of thousands of dollars in perks. Baylor also marketed and promoted his practice to the public, encouraging other doctors to refer patients to him.
Baylor officials deny the “material allegations” and plan to file a response in court, a hospital spokeswoman told me in a written statement.
“The quality of the patient care we provide is of paramount importance to us and we take all patient care-related claims very seriously,” the statement said.
Duntsch has not responded to messages. The phone line at his former Plano office has been disconnected.
Christopher Daniel Duntsch
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The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in the Northern District of Texas, echoes allegations from a previous Dallas County lawsuit and a recent license-revocation order from the Texas Medical Board. But the new suit delves deeper into his stint at Baylor.
The board suspended Duntsch’s license last summer, calling him a “continuing threat to public health.” In revoking his license in December, the board said he violated care standards in the treatment of six patients, including two who died.
The revocation order spans a year then he will be allowed to reapply. The board said it had no evidence to support a finding that Duntsch is “impaired by drugs or alcohol” or that he was under the influence during any of those six procedures.
But Duntsch’s alleged drug and alcohol use, stretching back to his residency program at the University of Tennessee, is at the center of the new suit. And it names former colleagues and patients of the neurosurgeon as witnesses.
During the fourth year of his sixth-year residency, a nurse “witnessed him using cocaine” and he was sent to an impaired physician program for several months, the suit says. But he was allowed to complete his residency in 2010.
In July 2011, he moved to Dallas and Baylor recruited him for a joint venture with the Minimally Invasive Spinal Institute. Soon after Duntsch arrived, he “performed his first case at Baylor Plano” but suddenly left for Las Vegas without making plans to care for the patient.
By September, the institute ended its relationship with Duntsch, claiming he abandoned treatment of patients and “absconded with property and medical equipment,” the suit says.
One of the institute’s owners, the suit alleges, warned Baylor that Duntsch was an “egomaniac, mentally ill, an alcoholic, drug addict or a combination thereof.” Baylor asked Duntsch to submit to drug testing, the suit says, but he dodged efforts to screen him.
Those issues didn’t stop Baylor from welcoming “Dr. Duntsch with open arms” to continue practicing at the hospital, the suit says. “Baylor Plano’s concern was how they were going to get repaid the monies they had advanced,” the suit alleges, and the hospital put pressure on Duntsch to schedule surgeries.
The drug-use allegations kept surfacing.
“His pattern was to do cocaine for two to four days at a time,” according to the suit. “He would work and do cocaine. Following two to four days of cocaine use, he would ‘crash’ for a day or two. Efforts to contact him during periods of time when he would ‘crash’ were not fruitful.”
The suit described him drinking vodka throughout the day, first mixing it with juices then converting to “clear mixes.” He also “illegally” obtained prescription drugs such as Xanax and Oxycontin for his own use.
In November of 2011, Duntsch mishandled Fennell’s surgery, requiring another operation. In December and January, colleagues witnessed him make mistakes in three surgeries. During one “unnecessary” procedure, Duntsch was assisted by “his employee and girlfriend,” the suit says. In another, a fellow doctor alarmed by Duntsch’s practices grabbed his hands and “told him to stop.”
Then in February 2012 Duntsch performed a spinal fusion on his longtime friend Jerry Summers, who had moved to Dallas with him. But Summers was left a “permanent quadriplegic,” according to the suit.
Summers informed Baylor’s ICU nursing staff that he had witnessed Duntsch using drugs the night before his surgery, the lawsuit alleges. Summers also said that Duntsch’s drug use was a “common occurrence” prior to his surgeries.
An attorney for Summers later called Baylor to report the allegations, and the Baylor administration “removed Dr. Duntsch from the case and brought in another surgeon to care for Mr. Summers.”
Inexplicably, the suit says, Duntsch’s surgical privileges were “subsequently reinstated in March 2012.” One day later, it says, he was allowed to operate on another patient, Kelly Martin, who died from “massive blood loss” during a laminectomy.
At that point, Baylor asked for his resignation. But Baylor didn’t report him to the National Practitioner Data Bank, a system for checking doctors’ troubled histories, the suit says. After Duntsch applied for work at various Dallas hospitals, Dallas Medical Center approached him and granted him temporary privileges to perform five surgeries.
“Despite everything that occurred at their facility, Baylor Plano sent a letter of recommendation for Duntsch to Dallas Medical Center, stating there were no adverse concerns, adverse events or adverse issues associated with Duntsch,” the suit said. “As a result, Dr. Duntsch either killed or seriously maimed multiple patients who were not privy to the problems Duntsch had while affiliated with Baylor Plano.”
Dallas Medical Center eventually revoked Duntsch’s privileges in July 2012 after he allegedly injured a patient there, according to another malpractice suit.
Duntsch went on to practice at the University General Hospital Dallas, formerly South Hampton Community Hospital. There he injured another patient during a spinal procedure in June 2013, using “poor judgment and insufficient knowledge of the regional anatomy,” the state medical board said.
Last year, a medical board spokeswoman characterized Duntsch’s case as one of the most “egregious’’ ever in Texas involving a neurosurgeon.