<font color=lime>I met Mr. Jones in my taxi once. He told me then, about 6months ago, about this. I am glad it is over for the Jones family, but this guy still has a license to practice elswhere! :mad: </font>

Source.
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Finally, the doctor is not in -- at least not here

This story was published Monday, September 20th, 2004


The pill-popping doctor who bamboozled Kadlec Medical Center and sent a patient into a coma from which she has never recovered has surrendered his license to practice medicine in Washington.

About time. But it's not enough.

Dr. Robert Lee Berry still is licensed to practice in Arizona and Louisiana, according to the Washington State Department of Health.

His attorney -- and boy does he need one -- says the doctor is no longer practicing medicine.

The trouble with Dr. Berry, besides being an anesthesiologist whose patients sometimes don't wake up, is that on Nov. 22, 2002, he diverted drugs meant for five patients for whom he had provided anesthesia that day, according to a state document he has signed, and was impaired that day because of misusing prescription drugs.

His is a sordid story.

But it's a tragic one for Kimberly Jones and her family.

On that day she'd delivered her third child, a healthy baby girl. She had decided to have no more children and underwent a tubal ligation. It was during this relatively routine procedure that Dr. Berry erred so grievously.

Jones' family has been awarded an $8.5 million settlement in the case. Western Professional Insurance Co. and Kadlec, which had temporarily hired Dr. Berry through a Texas agency, are asking $7.5 million from Dr. Berry's former Louisiana hospital and anesthesiology group, accusing them of withholding information about the doctor's problems.

It's logical to assume that the state of Washington would have taken an immediate and serious interest in Dr. Berry after the events at Kadlec.

But an investigation wasn't launched until eight months after the incident, and then only after the Herald asked the state medical board why Berry still had an unblemished record.

Residents of Washington should now be safe from any more care given by Dr. Berry.

But it's appalling that, should he choose, he might go back to practicing medicine somewhere else.
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[ 09-20-2004, 06:21 PM: Message edited by: LordKathen ]

<font color=lime>Did anyone read this? </font>

Yeah, but I couldn't find the punchline.

<font color=lime>Punch line? Its not a joke. </font>

Just saw it, LK. It's really a crime that people who are supposed to be professionals and have other people's lives in their hands can behave that way. It's even worse when they aren't removed from practice right off!

Wish I could say your story shocked me, but the very sad fact is that we've had numerous cases like this in NYS. Many of them in my area and quite a few of them in the last few years. One doctor just got removed from practice for molesting the children he treated.

Another was removed from practice in the cardiac unit at a prestigious hospital because he was apparently playing fast and loose with the documentation in order to get his patients the transplants they needed before others in the country. That not only got him ousted, it also got the program shut down for a while! Not good for patients, but it had to be done to investigate the whole thing. :(