The patient was then wheeled into the operating room and given anesthesia, while the surgical team, including Dalal, waited for Vrahas. SmithR. He died in 2008 at the age of 99. Mortality Following Surgical Management of Vancouver B Periprosthetic Fractures. Torchiana, through a spokesman, said he also kept detailed notes about that meeting, but declined to share them with the Spotlight Team saying it was a private meeting. By the time Bhattacharyya scrubbed back into Pereiras operation, Shervin was concerned the cement was too hard. Department Histories - MGH History - MGH Guides at Massachusetts He is an internationally recognized expert on the cellular and molecular mechanisms of bone regeneration and repair, locally applied antibiotics and minimally invasive fracture surgery. , -----, Wyndham Hotel - Beacon Hill Learn about the many ways you can get involved and support Mass General. General leadership, they were dispelled on a bitterly cold morning in February this year in a hospital hallway. Bhattacharyya was part of Mass. In emergencies, when cases can overlap by more than an hour, he added, then the attending surgeon must have a second attending surgeon immediately available.. We want to get you back to doing the things you love. In addition to his orthopaedic surgical residency at UM/Jackson, he completed an orthopaedic oncology fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital and Children's Hospital Boston. He was briefly assisted by a general surgeon. We offer the full spectrum of orthopaedic care and are the best and most comprehensive orthopaedic surgery department in New England. Tony Meng also had no idea that Wood had a second case going during his operation. and Andrew Pao, M.D. Join Connecticuts ONS, Jay Patel, M.D.New Chief Strategy Officer at Hoag, Welcome to our Master Class on Lumbar Total Joint Replacement, 4WEB Sues NuVasive for Alleged Patent Infringement, 5,153 Patient THA Study Finds 2.8x Revision Racial Disparity, SurgiSTUD: A New Gold Standard for Surgical Training, One Consistently Top Ranked Spine Meeting. Vivek Babaria, DO, RMSK has joined DISC Sports & Spine Center as its first osteopathic physician. The morning after their conversation, Skates reached out to Dr. David Torchiana, head of the physicians organization and now chief executive of Partners, who promised to look into the matter, according to e-mails obtained by the Globe. Can they really do two overlapping operations equally well? Your actions have been extraordinarily disruptive to the orthopaedic surgery department, Slavin wrote Burke. Dr. Freiberg, an expert in adult reconstructive surgery with an emphasis on hip and knee arthroplasty, says he wasnt looking for a change. And he is an exceptionally busy practitioner, having performed more than 10,000 knee and hip operations since completing his orthopedics residency in 1984. Partway through the procedure, Bhattacharyya left Shervin and another resident in room 21 and scrubbed into operating room 25 as the attending for an ankle fracture case that had started two minutes after Pereiras case, according to medical records. But then, one Saturday night in June 2008, the phone rang in his home. It was Dr. Nina Shervin, a fifth-year resident for whom Burke was a trusted mentor, calling in tears about an elderly woman in great pain; her newly replaced hip had dislocated twice. I was concerned at that time that there was a major disconnect between the views of a very prominent and capable orthopedic surgeon here and what we were hearing from our OR leadership, said Slavin, the hospital president. This story was reported by Globe Spotlight Team reporters Jenn Abelson, Jonathan Saltzman, Liz Kowalczyk and editor Scott Allen. Mark Vrahas is a nationally respected trauma surgeon and under his leadership, MGH created an orthopedic trauma team system that has been emulated across the country.. Surgeons are encouraged and expected to tell patients when theyll be absent for part of the surgery, an MGH spokeswoman said, but they are not explicitly required to do so. This is a realm where patient privacy and business information is, by law and habit, guarded zealously. Soon after the meeting, Burke found out that MGH had engaged Donald Stern, a former US attorney in Massachusetts and one of the best-known lawyers in Boston, to investigate Burkes concerns. These individuals come from medical device or pharmaceutical companies that have chief medical officers, so they said, We need one too., This position has three major components. Then, on Aug. 12, MGHs president, Peter Slavin, made it official. Learn how your comment data is processed. Giants of Orthopaedic Surgery: Richard J. Smith MD - PMC to analyze our web traffic. He can rattle off relatives who have been treated at MGH and says he wouldnt dream of going anywhere else. Patients would have to authorize such comment by the hospital, and only one of those who spoke to the Globe agreed to do so. He recalled Burke coming into his office in late 2009 and launching a fusillade of threats. Do you really think it reasonable to do these two cases by the same primary surgeon? He says he is at peace with that. collected, please refer to our Privacy Policy. Bassem Elhassan MD, Co-Director - MGH Shoulder Service, Boston Shoulder Institute Fellowship Program Director, Professor of Orthopedic Surgery, Harvard Medical School Jon J.P. Warner MD, Co-Director - MGH Shoulder Service, Director Boston Shoulder Institute, Acting Chief, MGH Sports Medicine Service, Chair for Quality and Safety for Orthopedics, Professor of Orthopedic Surgery, Harvard . Those changes came only after MGH officials took a remarkable step. This is why we are one of the best in the US. Orthopaedic Spine Service 617-724-8636 Contact Information Orthopaedic Spine Service Phone: 617-724-8636 Fax: 617-726-7587 Request an appointment Our spine team sees patients at these locations: Mass General - Boston 55 Fruit Street Yawkey Center for Outpatient Care, Suite 3A Boston, MA 02114 Orthopaedics at Mass General Waltham 52 Second Avenue General orthopedics when he took over as department head in 1998. But, this is a separate issue. to analyze our web traffic. Madelyn "Maddy" Pearson, DNP, RN, NEA-BC, is chief nursing officer and senior vice president of patient care services at Brigham and Women's Hospital. The family wanted a second opinion. Get the latest news, explore events and connect with Mass General. Youre in the prime of your practice life. But the fact is that if I were to wait until the age of 70, I might not be as flexible or dynamic.. The program's greatest strength is its residents. He is an internationally-recognized expert on the treatment of foot and ankle fractures and other traumatic injuries to the lower extremity. Please join us in congratulating the 13 Mass General orthopaedic surgeons named Top Doctors by Boston magazine for 2022. MRI results came in after midnight and confirmed that something was very wrong. No one knew it at the time, but it was, for Burke and MGH, the triggering moment in a seven-year conflict. Upon returning after World War II in 1947, Dr. Barr succeeded Dr. Marius N. Smith-Peterson as the chief of orthopedic surgery at the Massachusetts General Hospital, having become a member of the staff in 1930. The Orthopaedic Oncology Service is led by Dr. Henry Mankin, a leader in the field of connective tissue oncology. Wood first went in through the front of Mengs neck and removed parts of vertebrae. Wood later testified that he performed this particular procedure only once or twice a year, working in a delicate space where the difference between recovery and ruin is sometimes a scalpels width. (Lillemoe later said he had misspoken.). To schedule an appointment with one of our 40 expert orthopaedic surgeons at any of our six locations in the greater Boston area, please call 617-732-5322, or fill out an online appointment request form. Some tests may be necessary at that time, including x-rays, CT scans and MRIs. Drs. Get the latest news, explore events and connect with Mass General. PCPs often are your first point of contact for your general health concerns. Stern, with a Partners attorney usually by his side, conducted dozens of confidential interviews over several months to look into allegations of patient harm, billing problems, and what double-booking critics considered a culture of intimidation at the hospital. Anesthesia, Critical Care & Pain Medicine, Billing, Insurance & Financial Assistance, Mass General/North Shore Center for Outpatient Care, Director, Spine Oncology & Co-Director, Stephan L. Harris Chordoma Center, Associate Professor of Orthopedic Surgery, Harvard Medical School, Executive Vice Chair, Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Program Director, Harvard Combined Orthopaedic Residency Program, Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery, Harvard Medical School, Assistant Chief, Orthopaedic Spine Service, Director, MGH/BWH Orthopaedic Spine Surgery Fellowship Program, Assistant Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery, Harvard Medical School, Instructor in Orthopaedic Surgery, Harvard Medical School, Director, Adult Spinal Deformity & Spinal Reconstruction, MGH Orthopaedic Spine Surgery Fellowship Site Director, Adult Spinal Reconstruction Orthopaedic Surgeon, Pediatric Spine & Scoliosis Surgeon, Mass General for Children, Director of Spine Training for the Harvard/Spaulding Sports Medicine Fellowship Program, Instructor in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Harvard Medical School, Nurse Practitioner with Dr. Christopher Bono, Dr. Stuart Hershman & Dr. Joseph Schwab, Physician Assistant with Dr. Frank Pedlow, Inpatient Physician Assistant - Shoulder; Spine, Inpatient Nurse Practitioner - Shoulder; Spine. Let us help you navigate your in-person or virtual visit to Mass General. Learn about career opportunities, search for positions and apply for a job. Waiting for Wood in operating room 72 that day in 2012 was Tony Meng, a 41-year-old father of two from Westwood who had been diagnosed that summer with a serious degenerative condition that constricted his spinal cord, causing pain, tingling, and numbness. Providing journalistic work product, particularly during an ongoing project By the time Bhattacharyya returned to implant the hip, they say, he had completed work on the critical parts of the ankle case, and the earlier operation in room 22 was also over. Dr. Harris is a widely respected and beloved teacher. Michael Daubs, M.D. Wood was known among his peers for taking on some of the most challenging cases, sometimes as the surgeon of last resort for suffering patients who had been turned down by other doctors. SunderNeelakantan Sunder, M.D.Anesthesiologist would later retire, in part because he was fed up with the battle over double-booking. That resident worked on the 2008 hip surgery case that first raised concerns for Burke about double-booking. That doctor worked in the orthopedic trauma service where, MGH says, overlapping surgeries can be more common, and sometimes necessary, as doctors respond to clusters of urgent and emergent cases. BostonMA, 02114, Wyndham Hotel - Beacon Hill This event will be livestreamed. Clash in the name of care - A Boston Globe Spotlight Team Report Some doctors, Wood among them, consider disclosure of double-booking a case-by-case call. At Mass General, the brightest minds in medicine collaborate on behalf of our patients to bridge innovation science with state-of-the-art clinical medicine. Former US attorney Donald Sterns 2012 report remains private, its conclusions known only at the institutions highest levels. From that moment, battling concurrent surgery became Burkes cause and the gap between him and the hospital he loved now poisoned ground would only grow. Vassallo and Shervin did not respond to repeated requests for comment. Gitajn IL, Heng M, Weaver MJ, Casemyr N, May C, Vrahas MS, Harris MB. Contacted by the Globe, Stern declined comment. If Burke had any doubts about the price he would pay for openly challenging Mass. Joseph H. Schwab, MD, MS. Chief, Orthopaedic Spine Surgery. AustenW. Instructor or Assistant Professor of Medicine (Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Hypertension) Brigham and Women's Hospital Date Posted: 11/18/2022. And since I know a lot of surgeon-colleagues they are honest with their opinions and dont hold back., Orthopedic surgeons as a group tend to think of their careers in a linear fashion, i.e., I am going to do this for X number of years and then retire or do something different. I am 55 and some people would say, What are you doing? They hired the regions former top federal prosecutor to examine Burkes claims, interviewing 60 staffers across the hospital. Dr. Bridwell is the Co-Director and Founder of the Pediatric/Adult Spinal Deformity Service. She later sued the hospital for alleged gender discrimination, an accusation ultimately rejected by a federal court jury after almost five weeks of testimony from MGH doctors and leaders, including Rubash. I am absolutely thrilled for Dr. Freuberg on his new role. Jenks had publicly accused his surgical team of botching the surgery, failing to smooth a sharp place on his spine that sliced me open after the surgery and, he believes, ended his career. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Mitchel+b+harris, Mass General Hosts Orthopaedic Trauma Associations Inaugural Traveling Fellows, Mass General orthopaedic surgeons ranked among Top Doctors in Boston, MD, University of Illinois College of Medicine at Chicago, Residency, Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, Residency, Sunnybrook & Women's College Health Sciences Centre, Fellowship, University of Toronto, Sunnybrook Health Science Center, Orthopaedic Surgery, American Board of Orthopaedic Surgery, Great-West Healthcare (formally One Health Plan), Outcomes of the Management of Spinal Disorders: Operative and Nonoperative, Outcomes of Geriatric Spinal Fracture Management, Stem Cell Augmentation of Fracture Healing. Orthopedic surgeons in Suffolk County typically make nearly $500,000 a year, according to Doximity, an online service for physicians. He knew it was probably a breach of protocol, but he divulged his worries to Ronald Skates, a friend and former computer company executive. We use cookies and other tools to enhance your experience on our website and He removed a damaged disc from the womans lower back and plugged it with bone; it would be the last surgery he did on her that day, though he checked on her twice and gave instructions to her medical team. With more than 25 years of experience in academic orthopaedic surgery, Mitchel B. Harris, MD, has been named chief of the Department of Orthopaedics at Massachusetts General Hospital, effective October 1, 2017. General to many teaching hospitals where surgeons in training are integral contributors to the surgical team. Surgeons would face more requirements and more limits. Was that really too much to expect?, Lillemoe bristled that Burke had alerted state agencies and disagreed that internal efforts had been ineffective. collected, please refer to our Privacy Policy. Orthopaedic Journal at Harvard Medical School - annual publication The risks are real; the benefits can be huge. 5 Blossom St The Globe declined the hospitals request to return the documents for a review of Burkes redactions. to analyze our web traffic. He arrived stressing the need to reduce surgical complications generally and walked into the debate over the safety of double-booking. Meng, can you move your arms or legs, or squeeze my fingers or wiggle your toes?, All Meng could do, when the resident asked, was wince.. It is, however, hard to verify the comparison as some of those peer institutions, such as The Johns Hopkins Hospital, Stanford University Medical Center, and Mayo Clinic, declined to provide the Globe with copies of their policies or to discuss them in detail. In 1976, Dr. Glickel completed a residency in Orthopedic Surgery at the Harvard Combined Orthopedic Program. This summer, Wood said he would leave Boston to become a professor of orthopedic surgery at Stanford University in his native California, starting in November. 50th President of the CSRS, Dr. Babaria Joins DISC Sports & Spine Center, Michael Kelly, M.D. Chiefs Reports - Massachusetts General Hospital MGH officials assert that Burke violated hospital rules and possibly federal privacy laws by supplying the Globe with copies of some internal records. Learn about career opportunities, search for positions and apply for a job. I wish you would have given us a chance as once people see we mean business, things will change for the better. Federal lawyers, meanwhile, have subpoenaed all of Burkes records on concurrent surgeries. Certainly, at a hospital where 37,000 surgeries are performed each year, concurrent operations make up a small minority. General orthopedics but did not study whether concurrent surgery played a role in the departments success. To relieve the symptoms, the surgeon would have to slice through the front of Mengs neck, navigate around arteries that supply blood to the brain, and remove parts of his vertebrae. Dr. Allan Kirk, the head of surgery at Duke University School of Medicine, coauthored an article this year on concurrent surgery in the Annals of Surgery, a journal edited by MGHs chief of surgery, Dr. Keith Lillemoe. State Attorney General Maura Healeys office is also looking into the matter, and prosecutors have contacted Burkes former colleagues. to analyze our web traffic. In addition to providing the consent form, MGH says its surgeons are expected to verbally discuss with the patient the plan for the surgery and potential risks, though there is no requirement that patients be told their surgeon is overseeing two cases at once. named new co-directors of the HSS Women's Sports Medicine Center. But where should hospitals draw the line between efficiency and individual attention, between modern case management and traditional ways? Warner noted he always performs the key components of surgery and that fellows occasionally do non-critical activities such as positioning and making the initial incision. They describe the practice as an extension of the teaching hospitals team approach, pairing senior doctors with residents surgical trainees and fellows, who have finished their general orthopedic surgery residency and are training in a subspecialty. It is a struggle few outside MGH and its parent company, Partners HealthCare, know anything about. This year, in response to Spotlight Team questions, the hospital conducted an analysis of hundreds of surgical cases and also reviewed 25 cases of concurrent surgeries where patients suffered complications. Such indirect supervision, where the attending is not present, is allowed under certain circumstances at teaching hospitals. Candidate must be an arthroplasty fellowship-trained, board-certified orthopaedic surgeon with an exemplary record that exhibits the . He called Mengs sudden plight, a devastating sort of picture., In 2013, Wood stepped down from his post as chief of spine surgery because he never felt completely comfortable in his abilities to communicate with and lead the division, RubashHarry E. Rubash, M.D.Chief of orthopedic surgery said in a written statement to the Globe. Burkes superiors seethe at his tactics, at what they consider a vainglorious crusade that has wrongfully tarnished some of his equally eminent colleagues. The surgical team, led by Wood, worked intensely to figure out why. Then, he would turn Meng over onto his abdomen and operate some more. After more than two years, the board, according to MGH, recently informed several surgeons they were no longer under review. Stoking their anxiety, they alleged, were cases of patient complications, including two that ended with the deaths of elderly patients; cases where surgeons were out of the operating room attending to another patient when an urgent need arose; cases where surgeons didnt show up to operations, leaving the work to a resident or fellow; cases of patients lying under anesthesia for prolonged periods waiting for a doctor to arrive or return; cases where operating room staff were confused about who would do the operation. Neither knew it at the time, but a seed had been planted. Dr. Dr. Freiberg, an expert in adult reconstructive surgery with an emphasis on hip and knee arthroplasty, says he wasn't looking for a change. In another case several years ago, an anesthesiologist says he was stunned that the surgeon never showed up for the procedure at all. George Dyer, M.D. MGHs sister hospital, Brigham and Womens, says it does not permit cases to run simultaneously for more than an hour, except in emergencies. If thats the case, I feel deceived, Meng, who has not returned to his job as a financial analyst since the 2012 operation, said in an interview. Anesthesiologist Dr. Lisa Wollman e-mailed Dr. Burke about a November 2011 incident in which a nervous orthopedic patient awaiting surgery discovered that her surgeon planned to do a second procedure overlapping with hers. Our orthopedic surgery team includes renowned surgeons who are highly skilled and experienced in their specialty area. Locally, most teaching hospitals allow minor overlap of cases, but only a few permit doctors to run two surgical cases simultaneously over an extended period. So when things went awry in some operating rooms with double-booked doctors, it was often anesthesiologists writing e-mails to hospital administrators and sharing information with Burke, whom they knew was willing to take their concerns to the top.