Dr. Hyde
By michelle | Posted on January 15, 2009 | Filed Under Unbelievable Legal Stories
In Oregon, a doctor practicing as a radiologist recently had his license suspended by the Oregon’s Board of Medical Examiners. Just what do you have to do to have that happen? In this case, the details are shocking.
He was never board certified in radiology, which explains some of his significant lack of knowledge and repeated acts of negligence, including:
1. Doing a CT scan on a neck of a patient who was concerned about a lump in his neck, and the doctor found no abnormalities. In fact, the patient had a cancer in his neck, that did appear on the scan;
2. Doing a breast ultrasound of a woman and noting that there were several small cysts on her breast at the medial portion at 3 o’clock, when the cysts were actually at 11 o’clock at the lateral aspect;
3. After conducting a sonography of the patient’s arteries, determining that the patient had artherosclerosis, when in fact the patient was perfectly healthy;
4. The doctor misdiagnosed a patient after performing a CT scan on his lungs with a tumor, when the patient had pneumonia;
5. When one of his patients underwent a CT scan of the abdomen, the doctor noted that there were small cysts on the patient’s ovaries and a normal uterus when the patient had no ovaries or uterus;
6. And on a totally different case than that one, the doctor did a CT scan on one patient’s abdomen and hips and noted that the patient had a normal uterus when the patient had no uterus.
There are more issues Dr. Shoemaker had than that. His defense to his comments about the normal uteruses was that basically he was just indicating he didn’t see anything abnormal; and the Board disagreed and believed the statement that there is a normal uterus means that Dr. Shoemaker thought he saw one.
The Board could have revoked him, but it suspended his license. They ordered that his license remain suspended until he becomes board certified in radiology, which means that even if he didn’t want to do radiology and just do family practice, he couldn’t (at least not legally). The Board also had the ability to fine him, but it did not. They did, however, require him to pay all the costs of the hearing, which, due to the significant amount of doctor testimony needed to do what had to be done, was about $11,000. Hopefully his previous patients are ok — and hopefully he won’t be seeing much more in the future.
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Tags: license, Negligence, suspend
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