Blog Documentation Supports Gentilello Lawsuit

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Among the allegations made by Dr. Larry Gentilello in his retaliation suit against UT Southwestern, was that residents were performing unsupervised operations on patients, a real Medicare no-no. (See Zemanta box below.)  I have just run across a fascinating blog called UT Southwestern and Parkland Hospital Stories.  It offers up documentation that would seem to support Dr. Gentilello in a variety of posts.  Here's an excerpt from a post titled "UT Southwestern and Parkland, Unsupervised Surgery? Sure, how else are residents going to learn?"

Operations performed by residents without faculty supervision does not raise alarms at Parkland. The surgery Residency Program director and Vice Chairman of the Department of Surgery, Jim Valentine has said at faculty meeting that "it's OK if patients suffer complications that could have been prevented with better faculty supervision. This is a teaching program."

If readers take a look at nothing else on the post above, they should view this handwritten note on a document wherein a physician says he's not going to sign off on a procedure because he wasn't there.

While I understand that residents have to learn somehow, I would sure enough want a faculty physician in the room, too. Even learned physicians make mistakes.  They're human. Students make even more.

Meanwhile, readers should click on the highlighted text to view more posts on "UT Southwestern and Parkland Hospital Stories."

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