News in brief - Feb. 2, 2004

Ohio transplant doctor gets visa - Class-action trial date pushed back - Florida physician honored by state medical board - Physician dead in apparent suicide - Massachusetts uses tobacco money to create patient safety center

Ohio transplant doctor gets visa

The kidney transplant program at Akron City Hospital in Akron, Ohio, is up and running again after a hiatus of more than six months.

The physician hired to resuscitate the program recently received a visa to work in the United States, after his first request for a work visa was denied last fall.

Akron's transplant program had been poised to close unless a full-time physician was found to replace the part-time visiting doctors who could not cover the program on short notice. Tanmay Lal, MD, was hired to fill this gap and had expected to start working soon after his July 2003 arrival date.

However, his request for an O-1 work visa was denied, even though he was legally allowed to live here as a dependent of his physician wife, who already had an O-1. The O-1 visa is for applicants of extraordinary ability at the top of their fields and is a typical path for transplant surgeons.

To the relief of the 96 patients on the kidney transplant waiting list, Dr. Lal recently won a waiver from his J-1 visa requirement to return to his home country for three years before reapplying for work in the United States.

Now armed with an H-1B visa, Dr. Lal is required to work as a general surgeon in a medically underserved area for three years, He will do that work at a clinic operated by Akron City Hospital. His transplant surgery duties will be in addition to the 32 hours he spends each week at this clinic for the underserved.

Class-action trial date pushed back

A federal judge in Miami pushed back until Sept. 13 the trial date for the class-action lawsuit doctors have filed against the nation's largest health plans. The trial was originally scheduled to begin in June. The class is estimated to include about 950,000 active and retired physicians.

Individual physicians and their professional organizations filed lawsuits against HMOs across the nation that were consolidated in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida in Miami.

The lawsuits accuse companies of unfair business practices in the way they paid doctors for their work, including bundling and downcoding and arbitrarily rejecting some claims.

Aetna and CIGNA HealthCare have settled suits against them. But lawsuits remain against United Healthcare Inc, Humana Inc., Anthem Inc., WellPoint Health Networks, PacifiCare Health Systems Inc. and Coventry Health Care Inc.

An appeal of whether the lawsuits were properly given class-action status is still pending before the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta.

Florida physician honored by state medical board

The Florida Board of Medicine honored Georges El-Bahri, MD, as the recipient of the Chairman's Recognition Award, which commends physicians who exemplify outstanding contributions to the medical profession and public service.

Dr. El-Bahri, who was board chair in 2000, is in private practice in general orthopedics and sports medicine in Jacksonville, Fla. At Memorial Medical Center, he serves on the medical staff executive committee, medical board and operating room committee. He also is team physician for the Jacksonville Suns, a minor league baseball team.

During his time as board chair, Dr. El-Bahri spearheaded changes to the board's office surgery rule. In February 2000, the board adopted substantial revisions to the standard of care for office surgery. Under his leadership, the board improved efficiency, hearing 35% more disciplinary cases than in 1999, board officials said.

Physician dead in apparent suicide

Dr. Harold Shipman, a British physician who is believed to have killed 215 to 260 of his patients between 1975 and 1998, was found dead in his prison cell Jan. 13, hanging from a noose made from his bed sheets, BBC News reported.

Dr. Shipman, 57, allegedly injected his victims with heroin, and Reuters reported he was caught only after the daughter of his last victim challenged her mother's new will in which she had left everything to the physician. The victim's body was exhumed, and heroin was found in her remains.

Dr. Shipman had been serving a life sentence since January 2000 after being found guilty of murdering 15 patients and forging a will.

Massachusetts uses tobacco money to create patient safety center

With the help of $200,000 from the state's share of the nationwide tobacco settlement, the Massachusetts Dept. of Health has created the Betsy Lehman Patient Safety Center, named after a Boston Globe columnist who died after receiving four times the amount of chemotherapy she was supposed to receive while being treated for breast cancer in 1994.

Located within the state's Executive Office of Health and Human Services, the center will create patient safety education and research programs for the health care industry and the general public, serve as a clearinghouse for reporting improvements in patient safety, coordinate patient safety data collection and coordinate state and local programs.

Assistant Health Dept. Commissioner Nancy Ridley will serve as director of the center.