Say Anything Blog

BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA - A hearing is underway in Australia looking into the deaths of dozens of patients linked to a doctor who was previously barred from performing surgery in the United States.

The Morris Commission in the state of Queensland is examining how Dr. Jayant Patel managed to go unchecked for almost two years while he worked at the Bundaberg Base Hospital, 360 kilometres north of Brisbane.

"I was left with open wounds for possibly four to six weeks," former patient Doris Hillier told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) in a radio interview.

Hillier counts herself lucky to be alive. Patel diagnosed her rash as a simple bruise.

Patel was educated in India and completed his residency in New York state. In 1984, he was cited by New York health officials for failing to examine patients before surgery. Authorities ordered him to surrender his licence in April 2001.

He also worked for Kaiser Permanante Hospital in Portland, Ore., which banned him from doing certain types of operations such as liver and pancreatic surgeries. The Oregon Board of Medical Examiners made his restriction statewide in September 2000.

Patel submitted four letters of recommendation from Kaiser colleagues, written on hospital stationary, in order to gain the job in Australia. His former colleagues are now refusing to comment.

"Kaiser Permanente never approved or released these letters and did not then and does not now endorse the documents," said Jim Gersbach, spokesperson for the hospital in a statement. Gersbach says those were personal letters and not professional ones.

Because of his reputation at the Bundaberg hospital, nurses told the inquiry they started hiding patients from him to prevent him from operating. Nurses also testified they called him "Dr. E. coli" because many of his patients came down with infections.