In Duntschs case, we see the weakness of Texas unregulated system of health care, a system built to protect doctors and hospitals. A 27-year-old Young had been working as a stripper in Memphis when she met Duntsch, then 40. According to The Dallas Morning News, he will be up for parole in 2045, when he is 74. Oxygen Insider is your all-access pass to never-before-seen content, free digital evidence kits, and much more. In January 2012, he assisted on one of Duntschs surgeries. He was convicted of injury to an elderly person in the 2012 surgery on Mary Efurd that put her in a wheelchair. Later in June 2013 Kirby sent a sworn statement to the Medical Board in which he laid out all of Duntschs patients he knew about and included reports from many of the surgeons who had worked on them. Given the graphic subject matter, if you're squeamish, keep your finger on the "fast forward" button while watching Dr. Death. His younger brother, Nathan, said he had spoken to Duntschs friend and former employee, Jerry Summers, who was left a quadriplegic after one of the botched surgeries. The medical malpractice cap and the near-immunity for hospitals snapped two threads from the regulatory web. Dr Deathis a new limited series about the rise and fall of Duntsch. Meanwhile, he was continuing to get patients, continuing to operate. Even Christopher's childhood friend, Jerry Summers, was unable to move his arms and legs after entrusting the surgeon with a cervical fusion surgery. Efurd woke up after surgery in horrible pain, barely able to move her legs. Its not clear how much Dallas Medical Center officials knew about Duntschs past or how much Baylor told them. Hes lost everything.. Brown was later found unresponsive in her hospital room and staff couldnt contact Duntsch for 90 minutes, according to those records. Upon his return, Duntsch performed surgery on a patient named Kellie Martinand she bled to death. Duntsch was also arrested for driving under the influence while staying with his parents in Colorado and found himself in handcuffs another time in April of 2015 after he was arrested for stealing $887.30 in Walmart merchandise, according to theD Magazine. Deathand the intense media scrutiny surrounding the shocking case would drive Young out of Dallas with the couples two sons. "I think all of us will be thinking about things like this, and hopefully there will be some tighter controls, more accountability in a lot of areas so something like this wont happen again. 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. He had been a neurosurgeon for 40 years and what he saw inside Efurds back shocked him. One might think that if a doctor had paralyzed one patient and had another die in the course of a month, it would be someones job to figure out why. But in the past 10 years, a series of conservative reforms have severely limited patients options for holding doctors and hospitals accountable for bad care. We felt confident too.. By the time she was transferred to UT Southwestern Medical Center later that day, she was brain dead. 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. The nuance of his private life is obscured by allusions to a failed football career and a demeaning father that somehow are. Though the Texas Medical Board is required by statute to investigate any doctor with more than three malpractice suits, no action was ever taken against the doctor by the state. Christopher Duntsch wrote that he was ready to become a "cold blooded killer". Of the three in the academy, viz. You know in the beginning he talked about marriage. His victims also had descriptors. Those are the words that Dr. Christopher Duntsch, a Dallas neurosurgeon, wrote to his girlfriend in 2011 in the midst of a two-year period that left 33 of his 38 patients maimed, wounded or . .css-1me6ynq{-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-decoration-thickness:0.0625rem;text-decoration-color:#125C68;text-underline-offset:0.25rem;color:#125C68;-webkit-transition:all 0.3s ease-in-out;transition:all 0.3s ease-in-out;}.css-1me6ynq:hover{color:#595959;text-decoration-color:#595959;}Peacock's Dr. Death is a chilling dramatization of the real-life story of former neurosurgeon Christopher Duntsch. 121. When Summers woke up he couldnt move his arms or legs. But Young would never get the happy ending she had envisioned with the doctor. As a stay-at-home mom to the couplestwochildren,she also found herself in financial trouble and was evicted from her home twice. He became a quadriplegic, and in February 2021, died from an infection connected to that very surgery one decade prior, per Local 24 News. In effect, plaintiffs have to prove a very tough case without access to the necessary hospital records. When physical therapy didnt relieve the pain, her family doctor suggested she see a certain neurosurgeonbut the doctor couldnt find that surgeons card, so she suggested Duntsch instead. To become a neurosurgeon, one typically has to complete over 1000 surgeries in residency, but somehow, reporter Laura Beil discovered that Duntsch only completed 100. He put together a website and began bringing in patients. Another suffered a sliced vertebral artery which led to a stroke and later death. Ill do some crying. They shouldnt ever happen in someones entire career. The show consists of interviews with his patients and other people close to the case, as well as the full story of Duntsch's crimes. 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. 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. We may earn commission from links on this page, but we only recommend products we back. It was just one simple procedure before her trip, but Martin would never to make it Antigua or see her husband or two adult daughters again. Soon after Summers woke up paralyzed, a woman named Kellie Martin came to see Duntsch at Texas Neurosurgical Institute. 300 (2.48 per match) 2021. The jury came back with their verdict in about an hour. And Ill reflect back on how difficult those first months were afterwards. After losing his license, Duntsch filed for bankruptcy and returned to Colorado, where his parents live. We may earn commission from links on this page, but we only recommend products we back. For the last three days, jurors listened to testimony in the . Create your free profile and get access to exclusive content. He said that Summers had broken down in to uncontrolled crying and said, I know your brother would never do this to me on purpose.. I left with him and believed in him and then, you know, he just kind of fell apart.. He was a megalomaniac. According to Kirby, the hospital owner told him that Duntsch had privileges to do only minimally invasive surgeries. The surgery, he said, beaming into the camera, was a resounding success. Duntsch was once an up and coming neurosurgeon. More than a year had passed since Kellie Martins death and the complaint that started it all. Editors note: For more information about Dr. Christopher Duntschs case, listen to the 2018 podcast Dr. 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. Senior Editor, Editorial Business Development, Where Is Dr. Death Now? Their fellow physicians had found them committing such offenses as malpractice, sexual assault and drug use. You're probably asking, How could Duntsch have gotten away with a string of botched surgeries? 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. In one, Duntsch tells the story, over stock footage of an operation, of a taxing back surgery he performed on an older woman. Though many were passed off as accidents, a surgeon told D Magazine that these mistakes were "never events" and should not "ever happen in someone's entire career.". Martin selected Dr. Christopher Duntsch, a neurosurgeon with a glowing reputation, to perform the surgery at Baylor Plano Hospital. During a spinal surgery on his childhood friend and roommate, Jerry Summers, Duntsch damaged an artery and rendered him a quadriplegic. His dad is a physical therapist. According to what his former assistant Kimberly Morgan said in her deposition, Christopher allegedly would regularly drink vodka and kept a handle of Stoli underneath his desk. Duntsch was still living with Young, but he tried to carry out the dual romances by lying to each woman. But Baylor didnt hold him to that. Duntsch was an anomaly, one of the worst malpractice cases Texas has seen in decades. He was friendly, and we had good conversation. By all appearances, he had simply decided to leave. The investigator, Maria Lopez, lets him yell. Near the end of his report, Kirby wrote, The [Medical Board] must stop this sociopath Duntsch immediately or he will continue [to] maim and kill innocent patients. Perhaps it was the completeness and forcefulness of his presentation, perhaps it was the fact that another neurosurgeon had just joined the board, and he understood as none of the rest did the severity of what Duntsch had done. The only entity that could stop Duntsch from seeing more patients was the Texas Medical Board. 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. On the tape, Henderson demands to know why Duntsch is still practicing. The protections make some sense. Prince Charming, Imgonnachange your life, Young toldCNBCsAmerican Greed inan episode airing earlier this year. He works out, he reads, he studies the Bible. "The nerve root had been severed. As they dressed for surgery, Duntsch boasted to Kirby that he was the best neurosurgeon in Dallas. . While Christopher caused harm to many, it wasn't until a patient Mary Efurd that he was charged with a crime. "He was interpersonally a monster, a nightmare to be around. Texas number of license applications has grown every year since 2003, when medical malpractice damage caps passed. So why didnt he stop? Shughart said. The problem, she said, isnt staff. The operation was a spinal fusion in which two vertebrae are joined; surgeons use a metal plate to help hold the vertebrae together. Anton Floquet/NBCUniversal. Duntsch, 40, met Wendy, 27, at a bar where she was working as a stripper. In February of 2017, Christopher was sentenced to life in prison. 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.. His report was damning. And then there was the 2011 case of Dr. Rolando Arafiles, the West Texas doctor who sicced the county sheriff on two nurses who dared report him to the Texas Medical Board (see Intent to Harm, March 2011). He told Young that Morgan was his assistant and there was nothing romantic going on between the pair. It was supposed to be a simple procedure, which is, perhaps, why Baylor didnt put anyone in the operating room to supervise Duntsch. Even now, Young told American Greed she still hears from Duntsch when he calls to talk to their sons. Another doctor compared Duntsch to Hannibal Lecter three times in eight minutes. After a few calls to various Dallas-area medical societies, someone suggested he call the Medical Board. In December 2012, he performed a cervical fusion at Legacy Surgery Center of Frisco that left his patient with paralyzed vocal cordsan unheard-of complication. Death Showrunner Breaks Down Turning Hit Podcast Into New Drama Series On Peacock, (And if you want to dive even deeper into the story, you can also watch the new docuseries, on Peacock, which features interviews with numerous people intimately involved in the case. In this case, as well, the Texas Medical Board took no action, according to Public Citizen. Instead, Duntsch would find himself behind bars for life after botching more than 30 surgeriesresulting in the death of two patients and earning him the nickname Dr. When he moved to Dallas in late 2010, Duntsch was 41 years old, fresh out of a residency program at the University of Tennessee Health Science Centers Department of Neurosurgery in Memphis. Over the next year, the Medical Board would receive at least six more complaints from doctors who had seen Duntschs work up close. Duntsch's trial took place in 2017. He had a slick marketing team in Best Docs Network, a physician PR company that pumps out infomercials to local TV stations. Duntsch appealed his sentence and lost the appeal in 2018. Sometimes we know that someones bad, but when it comes to taking them to a hearing and proving it to where we can actually do some disciplinary action, it takes time of gathering evidence. In the second, while doing a cervical fusion on a woman named Floella Brown, Duntsch removed a bone from an area that was not required by any clinical or anatomical standards, resulting in injury to the vertebral artery, according to Texas Medical Board records. Photos, illustrations and other art may be available for syndication but must be confirmed. Doctors, and then, later, lawyers would call the boards investigators and sometimes even the board members themselves, begging them to do something. Duntsch, who is now 50, is serving time in a Texas prison. The board cant revoke a license without overwhelming evidence, and investigations can take months, with months or years of costly hearings dragging on afterward. The Texas Observer is known for its fiercely independent, uncompromising work which we are pleased to provide to the public at no charge in this space. Culture TV Peacock True Crime. Its a completely egregious case, Leigh Hopper, then head of communications for the Texas Medical Board, told The Dallas Morning News in June. Doctors brought in to clean up his surgeries decried his surgical misadventures, according to hospital records. He then had trouble moving the plate into place. A man who was a victim of other people's bad work and bad behavior," he told Newsweek. He didnt tell them about Baylors internal reports that faulted him in both cases, according to Henderson. Dr. Christopher Duntsch, better known as Doctor Death, is serving a life sentence at a Texas prison today, according to his inmate record. Kirby said Duntsch had problems at nearly every step of the operation. Public Citizen found that 793 Texas doctors had lost clinical privileges between 1990 and 2011. He explained the disturbing visit by saying he had been attacked by an investigator for an attorney hired by one of his patients, although that account was never verified. Every time a doctor loses clinical privileges at a hospital, or has them suspended, hospitals are required by law to notify the National Practitioner Databank. Further, both works question Duntsch's perspective. Kimberly Morgan is the former assistant and ex-girlfriend of Christopher Duntsch, nicknamed Dr Death. It's a good questionand one that Dr. Death details, along with the surprisingly difficult fight to revoke his license. 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. And while the Medical Board investigated, the pattern continued. The show starsJoshua Jackson,Grace Gummer, AnnaSophia Robb,Christian SlaterandAlec Baldwin. Office manager B.J. Dallas Medical Center also declined to comment, citing privacy concerns. In July 2012, four months after Kellie Martins death, Duntsch applied for surgical privileges at Dallas Medical Center. Summers remains paralyzed. By the time the Texas Medical Board revoked his license in June 2013, Duntsch had left two patients dead and four paralyzed in a series of botched surgeries. For one, there was alleged drug and alcohol abuse. We moved in together within three months, and then I became pregnant.. They know if they try to discipline a doctor, the burden of proof will be on them. She said Duntsch came highly recommended. Since receiving his life sentence, Dr Death is currently housed in the O.B. At his home and office, my calls rang and rang before going to voicemail boxes that were full. When the Medical Board suspended Duntschs license, the agencys spokespeople too seemed shocked. My whole world crashed, he said. He had no idea what he was doing. Get an all-access pass to never-before-seen content, free digital evidence kits, and much more! Friends since they played football together in high school, Summers helped Duntsch stay organized while he worked in the lab during his residency. After Christopher performed a spinal surgery on Mary in 2012, Mary suffered crippling pain afterward. Yet Arafiles didnt surrender his license until November 2011, after he had been convicted of a felony. Kirby had spent 16 years performing general surgery in the Dallas area, in which time hed assisted on more than 2,000 spine operations. You could have a Medical Board thats the size of the [Texas Department of Public Safety], she said, but the state doesnt want that. In July of that year, Duntsch was indicted by a Dallas County grand jury on five counts of aggravated assault and one count of harming an elderly person. But its more complicated than that. If the board decides to act on a complaintand only one in four complaints makes it that farinvestigators begin subpoenaing hospital records, which the board will eventually send to a pair of volunteer doctors in the same specialty who will review the case (if they disagree, a third doctor has to be found to break the tie).

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