$2 Million Fine Small Potatoes For Kaiser Transplant Disaster

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By Evelyn Pringle (about the author) Page 4 of 5 page(s)

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"So he was actually on nobody's list," he noted, "when he passed away and had no chance of getting a kidney."

Fifty-six-year-old, Bernard Burks, also filed a lawsuit against the HMO in Sacramento County Superior Court, for insurance bad faith and breach of contract, after he was unable to obtain a transplant. The lawsuit alleges Kaiser ignored his phone calls and failed to arrange a transplant even though Mr Burks' daughter was a compatible donor and was willing to donate a kidney.

As a result of the lawsuit, Kaiser agreed to pay for Mr Burks' kidney transplant at Stanford University Medical Center, according to National Legal News on June 22, 2006.

Litigants suing Kaiser will certainly have enough witnesses to call and documentary evidence to present to the juries.

The first witness called might well be David Martin, the former administrator of the transplant program, who filed his own lawsuit in San Francisco Superior Court, on July 14, 2006, requesting $5 million in damages, and alleging that he was terminated after only two months on the job for raising concerns about patient care and related issues, including violations of state and federal laws.

Some of the complaint's specific allegations include: (1) Kaiser never attempted to reconcile its end-stage kidney patient records with those at its former contracting hospitals; (2) hundreds of patient charts were lost; (3) perfect match kidneys were refused; (4) nurses gave out inaccurate and false information about the status of patients and their care; (5) patients were given inappropriate medications; (6) surgical and medical decision-making processes were confused; and (7) abuses occurred in the physician review process.

According to the lawsuit, Kaiser's program "was so poorly organized and unprofessionally managed that it failed to comply with state and federal requirements and was compromising patient care, leading to unnecessary suffering and possibly deaths."

After he was terminated, Mr Merlin started the whole ball rolling when he contacted the LA Times and CBS TV-Channel 5 in San Francisco. He also alerted state and federal regulators, the US Department of Justice and the Medical Board of California.

As a result of Mr Merlin's contacts, the Los Angeles Times and CBS 5, broke the story about the failed transplant program in early May 2006, and within weeks Kaiser shut the program down and agreed to transfer the patients to the other facilities.

Another good witness for plaintiffs might be Social worker, Bonnie Jacobson, who resigned from the Kaiser program in July, and said she thought the $2 million fine was justified. "I don't really feel that the really high-up people in the administration at Kaiser got this," she told the LA Times.

"If any of them had to go for even one dialysis treatment," she stated, "they would have a whole new understanding of what it means to these patients to get a kidney transplant."

Federal investigators could also be called to testify. In a highly critical report issued on June 23, 2006, Medicare investigators said the Kaiser program was poorly planned, staffed, and qualified to care for transplant patients. It also said no one at the HMO even seemed aware that the patients were at risk.

The report says Kaiser staff told Medicare officials that over a period of time there were more than 1,000 incomplete patient records.

In addition, there was "no indication that patients were informed of their rights or of other available options as well as potential consequences of the transfer," the inspectors wrote.

Investigators found staff members on the job with no training including nurses who had "little or no knowledge of the assessment and care of pre-transplant patients." The inspectors also said they found no evidence that anyone made sure the nurses were able to do their jobs.

In another instance cited in the report, the personnel file for the data coordinator who was responsible for processing patient forms and ensuring that their wait time was transferred, "revealed the lack of written evidence of any training" in how to use the computer system for the United Network for Organ Sharing, which oversees the waiting lists and organ allocation.

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