Semmelweis society international

OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT
SEMMELWEIS SOCIETY INTERNATIONAL
80 12th STREET, SUITE #307
WHEELING, WEST VIRGINIA 26003
www.semmelweis.org
724-678-2648
“Supporting Fair and Proper Due Process in Medical Peer Review without Compromising
Medical Ethics or Patient Care”
First and foremost, I was astounded that it took you 4 weeks to make an initial decision on my case and then took about 4 lines agreeing with the Texas Medical Board’s decision How exactly do you serve the public? Rubber stamping a state agency’s decision (as obviously biased as it was), should have alerted you to a TMB decision that was arbitrary and capricious. In addition, you essentially put me in the middle of two state agency’s tug of war over those agency’s interpretation by siding with the Texas Medical Board (who was involved defending their ridiculous allegations with the State Office of Administrative judges who were impartial and even tempered and were given the responsibility of weighing the evidence as presented by the Texas Medical Board). How strange you must now feel that several members have recently resigned including the Texas Medical Board’s executive director, Donald Patrick, MD who essentially has done his best to punish those he wanted while giving others byes. For example, look at their web site and see how some doctors have been fined $10,000 for late charts while others, notably John Oswalt, MD a former partner of Dr. Tom Kirksey, who was a member of the Texas Medical Board, was fined only $2,500 in administrative fees even though he removed the incorrect lung from a patient, hastening that person’s death. To make matters worst, Roberta Kalifut, DO, the president of the TMB, perjured herself by denying her role in reporting her own competitors for baseless accusations at a Despite your “washing your hands” of my appeal, I find your actions reprehensible. If you had taken the time to read the transcripts, as well as the final order, you would have realized that Patrick wanted, and with your help, achieved his goal of revoking my Texas license for (1) having a patient die from a “giant aneurysm, (2) having a patient develop a CSF leak, which was later repaired, and (3) having a patient with a large AVM have a post-op seizure after I told the nursing staff to give more Dilantin. Did you ever look at how difficult these types of cases were and that, unfortunately, one patient died but the other two did very well within days of their surgeries? Did you even take the time to see that this Texas Medical Board had, at one time, alleged over 20 different failures in standard of care issues, but were unable to prove any of them but these three? Dr. Patrick wanted me gone from Texas because I stood up to his rule and ridiculous support of bad faith peer review issues. I would think that you wanted the truth. Instead like Dr. Patrick, and Dr. Kalifut, you could not handle the truth and would rather destroy the truth than uphold it. If this is the threshold by which all neurosurgeons lose their Texas medical license then I wish my fellow colleagues well and will find a way to have them leave Texas. The Texas Medical Board even wrote in their Final Order findings of facts, that “Dr. Chalifoux’s complications were less than the national average.” You would think that a doctor with notably fewer complications would be sought after and not persecuted I thank God every day, that other state medical boards, including West Virginia, are more interested in the facts as outlined in the synopsis of the State Office of Administrative Hearing (SOAH) judges and not at statistics to fulfill quotas as the Texas Board has undoubtedly done and is using your “rubber stamp” to accomplish this task. Like it or not, you have enabled this to occur because you did not take the time and were wrapped up in the Texas Medical Board’s rhetoric of protecting the public. This type of public persecution is absurd! In addition, were you also aware that after I obtained a medical license in West Virginia in June 2005 and was planning to start work as a professor at West Virginia University, Roberta Kalifut DO, the Texas Medical Board President went to the press to state that “Dr. Chalifoux is a threat to the public?” Don’t you find it unusual that the president of state medical board would do this? What was her reasoning? Was she acting as the president of all 50 state medical boards or was this another example of how my case with the TMB was politically motivated and personal? No one whom I have spoken with has ever heard of this happening to anyone practicing in the United I am happy to report that since July 2005, I have been practicing in West Virginia and am doing very well despite what the Texas Medical Board alleged and what you rubber Shame on you for not looking for the truth. Unfortunately, doctors in Texas cannot count on judges like yourself to take the time and review the merits of a case instead of universally agreeing with a governor-appointed state agency of minions. I hope that you can sleep at night knowing that you did not just try to destroy my life and that of my family’s but have undoubtedly done this to many others. It’s time for you to leave office since you have allowed the Texas Medical Board to be judge, jury, and executioner, and have not taken a firm stance by requiring substantive due-process when dealing with cases involving a doctor’s medical license and livelihood. You are allowing legal homicide of the doctors who are facing this arbitrary and capricious medical board to occur when you in fact should be an objective entity evaluating and ensuring the fair handling of persecuted doctors, as well as their patients who have relied on these physicians to help them.

Source: http://www.semmelweissociety.org/semmelweis%20pdf/home/middle%20links/SSI%20letter%20to%20judge%20meurer.pdf