With the exception of pain management clinics and anesthesiologists, the board doesnt have the authority to inspect a doctor, or to start an investigation on its own. Link your TV provider to stream full episodes and live TV. He told Morgan that Young was just his secretary from Memphis, whose husband would be moving to the area soon, according to the podcast. Neither hospital would talk about Duntsch for this story. At first, Henderson thought Duntsch might be an impostor. Unfortunately, sometimes it takes longer than we want., What Henderson took from this, he told me, is that were dealing with people who dont do the job they are hired to do.. When Kirby saw Glidewell, he later wrote the Medical Board, he was horrified. The incision, he wrote, was cut into Glidewells throat two or three inches lower and an inch midline from where it should have been oriented saliva and pus were coming out of the wound.. In one, Duntsch tells the story, over stock footage of an operation, of a taxing back surgery he performed on an older woman. Duntsch, 44, is the first surgeon known to be sentenced to prison for a botched surgery. Duntsch appealed his sentence and lost the appeal in 2018. At the time, Duntsch had been fielding offers in Dallas, SanDiegoand New York from medical centers eager to have a neurosurgeon with hisseeminglyimpressive resume on staff. So I called them up, and they said, Will you fill out a complaint, and well probably read the complaint in about 30 days, and well start an investigation after that., I said, You dont seem to understand. Two days later, once Efurd was stable, Henderson was assigned to do the repair surgery. Things were rough during the state budget crisis in 2011, but now hiring is back up to normal. Get our latest in-depth reporting straight to your inbox. Another doctor compared Duntsch to Hannibal Lecter three times in eight minutes. Per The Washington Post, when another surgeon named Dr. Robert Henderson went in to investigate, he was shocked to find spinal hardware left in her soft tissue, a severed nerve root, a nerve with a screw in it and several screw holes on a different area of Mary's spine. After surgery, the patient, Barry Morguloff, woke up in more back pain than hed started with and had no feeling in his left leg. She said she thought he was going to make millions. He blamed Summers paralysis on Duntschs surgical misadventures, which had led to the artery being cut; the final straw, he wrote in his report, had been the packing of coagulants around the cut, which had seriously damaged Summers spinal cord. They shouldnt ever happen in someones entire career. He has a job inside the prison. But in Texas, when you go to see a doctor, there is a small but real chance that the doctor has been found by his or her peers to be a danger to the public, and that no one has bothered to do anything about it yet. Photos, illustrations and other art may be available for syndication but must be confirmed. Rather than immediately ordering scans to find out what was wrong, Duntsch moved on to other patients, according to Kirbys letter to the Medical Board. Christopher Duntsch wrote that he was ready to become a "cold blooded killer". AnnaSophia Robb Stars In New Series Dr. On the right side, there was a screw through a portion of the S1 nerve root.. The. Joshua Jackson as Christopher Duntsch in "Dr. Death." Barbara Nitke/Peacock Duntsch, 50, was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2017 in what's considered a precedent-setting case one of the. Christopher Duntsch shattered that trust over the course of a few years, ruining countless lives. Her spine was pockmarked with screw holes, and a screw had been lodged in another nerve root near the bottom of her spine," D Magazine describes. On June 26, the board held an emergency meeting and suspended Duntschs license. That complaint was filedalong with the 6,000 to 8,000 other complaints the Medical Board receives each year, in addition to the thousands of licensure applications the agencys 156 employees must review. The problem, she said, isnt staff. Into this milieu rolled Christopher Duntsch, M.D., like a 100-year storm. But as investigators took a look back at Christopher's history and consulted with those who knew him, what they discovered was quite disturbing. Even the fact that the board is conducting an investigation remains confidential until the investigation is over. After the Brown and Efurd debacles in July 2012, the CEO of Dallas Medical Center, Dr. Corazon Hernandez, fired Duntsch and reported him to the Medical Board, according to Henderson. Because he owed people a lot of money. In 1998, the board found Dr. Greggory Phillips to be addicted to painkillers, and that he was prescribing painkillers to himself and family members. He was arrested in 2014 for jumping over the fence atthe home of Youngs sisterin Garland and trying to take their son, Aiden. and a Ph.D. from a top-tier medical school, a decade of experience, and a central role in a pioneering stem-cell treatment. 121. The patients mother complained to the Medical Board. Duntschs case raises the question: If it took a year to stop a doctor accused of this much, what else is getting through? And while the Medical Board investigated, the pattern continued. Duntsch briefly enrolled at CSU in the fall of 1991 when he was 20 years old. They talked about how he doted on his two little boys. He said his son called him upset after several of the botched surgeries. Even when the board does sanction a doctor, those sanctions are often lighteven in cases in which the doctor is badly impaired. He felt, Kirby wrote to the Texas Medical Board a year later, that most of the spine surgery being done in Dallas was malpractice, and he was going to have to clean things up.. It is said to be rare for a physician to be indicted on several counts of aggravated assault stemming from events in an operating room. "Based on a hit podcast and inspired by the terrifying true story of Dr. Christopher Duntsch, a young and charismatic star in the Texas medical community," Peacock explains about the series. His father says Christopher Duntsch is a humbled man. This is what I wanted, she said. But it wouldnt be the end of the trouble between the pair. He told Young that Morgan was his assistant and there was nothing romantic going on between the pair. Dr Deathis a new limited series about the rise and fall of Duntsch. Another spinal fusion; another routine procedure. He talked impressive. "I think its going to be like a floodgate thats going to really open, crying. By the time she was transferred to UT Southwestern Medical Center later that day, she was brain dead. Do you think free access to journalism like this is important? In the two years he practiced as a spine surgeon across four Dallas institutions, Duntsch operated on 37 people. Dr. Duntsch's surviving surgery patients suffered a range of debilitating conditions, which ProPublica details: Permanent nerve damage, paralysis, loss of vocal cords. It's a good questionand one that Dr. Death details, along with the surprisingly difficult fight to revoke his license. He felt confident. He seemed to have a hard time moving organs and blood vessels out of the way, according to Kirby. They just cant comprehend that an M.D.-Ph.D. neurosurgeon could do what Christopher Duntsch was doing. After his license was suspended, Duntsch disappeared. "When asked about Dr. Duntschs weaknesses or areas for improvement, the supervising physician communicated that the only weakness Duntsch had was that he took on too many tasks for one person.". For a temporary suspension, the standard is even higher than the boards other enforcement actions. "Rather than protecting the public from harm, Baylor allowed him [Duntsch] to be passed on from hospital to hospital," Van Wey told the Dallas News. At every step of the way, you would have to know the right thing to do so you could do the wrong thing, because he did all the wrong things.. As she lay dying, Duntsch performed his third surgery, on a woman named Mary Efurd. The series is set to premiere on July 12 and will feature a star-studded cast. For the next several months, he was in constant pain, according to Mike Lyons, his attorney. For example, when Duntsch left Baylor Regional Medical Center at Plano, the hospital provided a letter confirming there had been no "summary or administrative restrictions or suspensions," despite the fact that Duntsch had been suspended for 30 days following Summers's surgery. He doesnt care what he has left in his wake.. After growing up in Tennessee,. Public Citizen found that 793 Texas doctors had lost clinical privileges between 1990 and 2011. Duntschwho was just completing a prestigious spine surgery fellowship in Tennesseebought Young an appletini and the two immediately clicked. But the school told Henderson that Duntsch had completed the residency program. Instead, she awoke in searing pain, which she likened to child birth, per D Magazine. My record is excellent," he told The Dallas Morning News in 2015. Why Trust Us? He was brilliant. When Summers woke up he couldnt move his arms or legs. Weve seen neurosurgeons get in trouble but not one such as this, in terms of the number of medical errors in such a short time.. The two-week trial especially focused on Mary Efurd's testimony. Even if a plaintiff wins the maximum award, after you pay your lawyer and your experts and go through, potentially, years of trial, not much is left. The medical malpractice cap and the near-immunity for hospitals snapped two threads from the regulatory web. My whole world crashed, he said. The board suspended his license but then immediately stayed the suspension and gave him probation. Alexander Zverev was dumped out in the last 16 of the ATP tournament in Munich, suffering a straight sets defeat to Christopher O'Connell on Thursday. "Ninety-nine percent of everything that has been said about me is completely false.". It would clearly be a policy decision for the Legislature to consider whether the process or the standards for evidence required for a temporary suspension need to change., Leigh Hopper, formerly the Medical Board spokesperson, put it more bluntly. Duntsch, it turned out, had, as with other patients, cut into Glidewells vertebral artery; an MRI found that he had also left a sponge festering in the soft tissue of Glidewells throat. Duntschs license is currently on temporary suspension pending further action by the board. Hearst Magazine Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved. And still it took the Texas Medical Board more than a year to stop Duntscha year in which he kept bringing into the operating room patients who ended up seriously injured or dead. Articles must link back to the original article and contain the following attribution at the top of the story: This article was originally published by the, Articles cannot be rewritten, edited or changed beyond alignments with house style books. 300 (2.48 per match) 2021. CHRISTOPHER Duntsch, is infamously known as Dr Death for gross malpractice. Across two years, Duntsch . At trial, prosecutors opted only to pursue the harming an elderly person charge connected to his failed surgery on MaryEfurd; however, other victims would also testify at trial. He then had trouble moving the plate into place. In 2017, Duntsch was sentenced to life in prison after being found guilty of maiming one of his patients. The Peacock originalDr Deathis based on atrue story. On the tape, Henderson demands to know why Duntsch is still practicing. Until the day of the suspension, if you had looked Duntsch up on the Texas Medical Board website, you would have found him a physician in good standing. As those watching the show know, Christopher was dubbed "Dr. Death" in D Magazine for his botched surgeries that caused the death of several patients and left others with disabling injuries. Anton Floquet/NBCUniversal. By all appearances, he had simply decided to leave. This was a voice for Kellie, said Don Martin, whose wife bled to death after one of those botched surgeries in 2012. He injured or killed 33 surgical patients between 2011 and 2013. and a Ph.D. from a top-tier medical school, a decade of experience, and a central role in a pioneering stem-cell treatment. He was a megalomaniac. In 2012, when Efurd was 74, she saw Duntsch for what should have been a relatively simple surgery to fuse two of her vertebrae. I couldnt believe a trained surgeon could do this, Henderson told me. It shouldnt happen again.". Sometimes hell have bedtime stories and try to be as normal as possible.". You're probably asking, How could Duntsch have gotten away with a string of botched surgeries? Even more surprising, these crimes came from a doctor who looked great on paper. Christopher Duntsch, the focus of Peacock's true crime series Dr. Death, looked good on paper. I left with him and believed in him and then, you know, he just kind of fell apart., Duntschs disturbing fall from grace is also chronicled in the new Peacock seriesDr. We may earn commission from links on this page, but we only recommend products we back. "I'm a well-trained surgeon. Written by Patrick Macmanus, the show will only be available exclusively on Peacock. He was functioning at a first- or second-year neurosurgical resident level but had no apparent insight into how bad his technique was.. Duntsch, who is now 50, is serving time in a Texas prison. Their romance moved. Next week marks the five-year anniversary of Texas neurosurgeon Christopher Duntsch being sentenced to life in prison. "Dr. Death" and the companion docuseries "Dr. Death: The Undoctored Story" are both available to stream on Peacock now. Two weeks later, on June 14, 2013, Kirby got a call to come to University General to do a recovery surgery on one of Duntschs patients. Duntsch, an engaging and fast-talking son of missionaries, came to North Texas with uncommon credentials. We may earn commission from links on this page, but we only recommend products we back. We may earn commission from links on this page, but we only recommend products we back. But the result is that unless a doctor is caught dealing drugs or sexually assaulting patientsor is convicted of a felonyit is difficult to get his or her license revoked. Christopher Duntsch, 46, was initially charged with five counts of aggravated assault causing serious bodily injury and one count of injuring an elderly person, 1 but the trial focused on the last charge, which alleged that Duntsch deliberately harmed Mary Efurd, then aged 72, in a 2012 operation that left her in a wheelchair. "The nerve root had been severed. [2] The division consists of two tiers within it: Premier Division A and Premier Division B. The relationship between Duntsch and Morgan would come to an end after he leftBaylor Medical Center in Planoamidst criticism that he had botched multiple surgeries, including one that left a patient dead. The jury found Duntsch guilty of injury to an elderly person (Efurd), and sentenced him to life in prison. He was listed as a pre-business major, a university spokesperson confirmed Thursday. "He works out, he reads, he studies the Biblehell call and say goodnight to his boys. Anatomy of a Tragedy. Once Duntsch proved himself inept, hospitals let him resign instead of going through the legal process of firing him. Deathand the intense media scrutiny surrounding the shocking case would drive Young out of Dallas with the couples two sons. Once Duntsch left Baylor, he was no longer the hospitals problem. He was convicted of injury to an elderly person in the 2012 surgery on Mary Efurd that put her in a wheelchair. During the surgery, Duntsch sliced into one of the arteries running down Summers spine, causing massive bleeding, which he tried to staunch by packing coagulants around the wound. For the last three days, jurors listened to testimony in the . He alleged that Duntsch promised to pay him in stocks and out of his own salary but failed to follow through. Dr. Death is the new true-crime series on Peacock starring The Affair's Joshua Jackson as the infamous surgeon Dr. Christopher Duntsch. Jodi Smith. The Legislature doesnt want the Medical Board taking a doctors licenseand livelihoodunnecessarily or based on flimsy or frivolous claims. He hired a marketing team and nurses. We now know that the Texas Medical Board was working behind the scenes in summer 2012, trying to find grounds to temporarily suspend Duntschs license. Senior Editor, Editorial Business Development, Where Is Dr. Death Now? Given the graphic subject matter, if you're squeamish, keep your finger on the "fast forward" button while watching Dr. Death. Among these doctors who escaped Medical Board action was one who racked up 22 malpractice suits over 12 years, totaling $2.4 million in judgments, for such things as performing unnecessary or harmful procedures or, in one case, removing the wrong body part, according to the federal database. The romance played out mostly in Duntsch's office at Baylor Plano, where he often did research after hours and drank vodka from a handle of Stoli he kept under his desk, according to D Magazine. You could have a Medical Board thats the size of the [Texas Department of Public Safety], she said, but the state doesnt want that. Scans later revealed bone fragments from Morguloffs vertebrae lodged in the nerves of his back, according to Lyons. Duntsch was first reported to the state medical board in 2012, per the Texas Observer. When she responds, shes quiet. Coverage of the latest true crime stories and famous cases explained, as well as the best TV shows, movies and podcasts in the genre. These doctors are busythey have practices of their own that pay a lot better than volunteering for the Medical Boardand there arent many of them. And Ill reflect back on how difficult those first months were afterwards. He had amputated a nerve root, Henderson said. Theres no reason to assume another doctor would have advised her differently. ", Mary's botched surgery was one of several in Christopher's record. On the online doctor-rating site Healthgrades.com, he had 4.5 stars out of five. Death Based On A True Story, Joshua Jackson On Role Of Surgeon, Christopher Duntsch, In Peacocks Dr. Please notify us by email that the article will be republished at, The Big Money Behind Greg Abbotts Intervention in Killer Doc Case, Sociopath Surgeon Duntsch Facing Criminal Charges for Botched Surgeries, Sociopath Surgeon Duntsch Arrested for Shoplifting Pants. Henderson says that Duntsch told the Dallas Medical Center administration about the Martin and Summers cases, but explained that the outcomes hadnt been his fault: Summers, he said, had been paralyzed by a bad drug interaction, and Martin had died because of complications from anesthesia. Outlets must also tag the Observer in all social media posts. Wendy Young, portrayed by Molly Griggs in Dr. Death, was the name of Duntsch's real girlfriend. Kayla Keegan leads Good Housekeepings editorial growth strategies in the partnership, news, social, branded, membership and newsletter spaces. Check out never-before-seen content, free digital evidence kits, and much more! In this case, as well, the Texas Medical Board took no action, according to Public Citizen. Martins surgery was Duntschs last at Baylor. So why didnt he stop? Shughart said. In February 2021, Summers died of an infection directly related to the surgery. They know if they try to discipline a doctor, the burden of proof will be on them. Three weeks later, Duntsch performed a spinal fusion on Jerry Summers, a childhood friend. Later, when Duntsch moved to Dallas to begin his career as a neurosurgeon he took Summers with him. . Then he waited for several more hours until the nurses came out to tell him and his daughters that Kellie Martin was dead. Doctors rights are to be protected at every step of the process. Young told D Magazine she was forced to move from her Dallas home after investigators started camping out on her street and attorneys started waiting in the stairwell of her apartment, looking for Duntsch. Or, was he actually a skilled surgeon intent on defying the Hippocratic Oath, and deliberately causing harm? His dad is a physical therapist. Doctors, and then, later, lawyers would call the boards investigators and sometimes even the board members themselves, begging them to do something. But her dream of Duntsch being her Prince Charming is now nothing more than a memory. In the end, he blamed pride for his sons downfall.
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