Sunday, August 17, 2008

Judge Rejects Plastic Surgeon Brian West's Attempt to Get a Restraining Order Against a Former Patient

Not all judges grant restraining orders without legitimate grounds. This was an attempt by Dr. West to silence injured patients from publishing negative experiences with him on the Internet.

By DAFFODIL J. ALTAN Thursday, August 14, 2008 - 3:01 pm

Cutting Remarks

Plastic surgeon Brian West tries to get a restraining order against a former patient who got him into trouble with the state

Brian West, a plastic surgeon who practiced most recently in Huntington Beach and who is about to go on trial with the Medical Board of California for violating the terms of the board’s alcohol-abuse treatment program, is convinced one of his former patients is violently stalking him.

He’s so convinced that in mid-July, he filed for a restraining order against the former patient, Tina Minasian, as well as for one against the husband of another former patient.

“Whenever she loses in a court of law, she turns violent,” the burly, soft-spoken West nervously told a judge at a Los Angeles Superior Courthouse in Santa Monica last week. He held a stack of evidence, including printed copies of Web pages from MySpace and the site Minasian started, “Brian West MD—Bad Plastic Surgeon.”

With his buxom wife, Leighann West, by his side as a key witness, West described how he had received anonymous death threats and was afraid for his children’s safety as a result of Minasian’s relentless web activity. He told the judge he has opened a criminal stalking case with the Los Angeles Police Department.

Minasian is almost single-handedly responsible for the slew of medical-board accusations West will face in September. The hearings could result in the revocation of West’s license.

West performed a body-lift on Minasian in 2002 while practicing in Sacramento. Minasian filed a malpractice suit in 2005 after her wound healed horribly, she says. As reported in the Weekly (see “Under Wraps,” Jan. 10), just before her case went to trial, Minasian found out West was under investigation by the state medical board. She went to two of the board’s hearings and learned about West’s failure to stay sober while he was in the board’s Diversion Program—and while she was his patient.

The highly confidential program (the public were not allowed to know if their doctor was involved) gave practicing physicians with drug- and alcohol-abuse problems a way out of license revocation if they agreed to attend rehab sessions and take random urine tests. It was permanently abolished this year after failing five audits during its 27-year existence.

The board allowed West to keep his license in 2005 and put him on probation, despite his having relapsed four times while in the program. He relocated to Los Angeles and has practiced in Beverly Hills, Long Beach and Huntington Beach.

Minasian lost her malpractice case against West but learned that she could file a complaint with the state medical board. Minasian also learned the board was unaware of the dozen or so patients who had filed lawsuits against West because separate complaints were never filed with the board. She then began finding other patients who experienced similar bad outcomes after their surgeries with West—patients who had been seeing him during the time he had relapsed and been arrested for a second DUI. Minasian convinced many such patients to file complaints with the board. Many also detailed their stories, complete with gory pictures, on Minasian’s website.

Minasian’s journey didn’t stop there. She has made local and national rounds, along with other former patients, in an effort to advocate for patient safety and expose what she feels was a failed state diversion program. Their stories—and West’s—have been covered by the AP, CNN and Fox News.

All of this negative coverage has made his life a living hell, West told the judge last week. Minasian’s violent streak, he said, increases every time she suffers a loss in her battles with him. The latest, West stated in court documents, was the medical board’s recent decision that Minasian’s specific case would no longer be heard by them along with the others’ in September.

In the Santa Monica courtroom, an impatient Judge John Reid asked West if he had ever been physically assaulted or received death threats directly from Minasian, who lives hundreds of miles away in Sacramento. The ruddy-faced physician said no, not exactly. He pointed to a MySpace page that he alleged Minasian opened in his name.

That and the website with patients’ stories weren’t enough to convince the judge of her violent streak. “That’s cause for a civil lawsuit,” Reid said of the Internet activity. “To get what you want, you have to show that you’ve been attacked, stricken, assaulted and that there is perceived injury or threat to you and your family.”

In an interview, Minasian described West’s restraining-order efforts as “his attempt to compromise my First Amendment rights and to keep me from being called as a witness in September.” Minasian said she and Ken Mikulecky, the husband of a former patient who was named in the second restraining order filed by West, couldn’t afford to fly down for the brief hearing.

First Amendment lawyer James Leonard, who flew in from Oakland to represent the pair pro bono, didn’t have to make much of a case. The judge rejected West’s request after about 15 minutes of deliberation, reiterating several times that a restraining order was not “the proper vehicle” for what West was seeking. “If you were defamed, file your lawsuit,” he told the doctor.

daltan@ocweekly.com

Saturday, August 16, 2008

Lethal Games Doctors Play

I receive lots of e-mail from people who have suffered devastating injuries from cosmetic procedures. More than 90% of these injuries are serious, did not involve risk factors associated with the procedure, were not due to patients' idiosyncratic physiology , but were the direct result of surgeons' negligence, lack of skill, lack of experience in executing certain procedures, etc.

Yesterday I received a message expressing what I have heard numerous times from victims of negligent surgery. I will not reveal the details of her heartbreaking physical dysfunction and disfigurement, which involve the face and neck, and were eerily similar to my own condition. What I want to share is her excellent description of the way injured patients, who most deserve the BEST care, cannot get ANY care at all. I have written about the many times I have consulted surgeons about my own life threatening condition, and never received a physical examination appropriate to the problem. My friends did not believe me until they actually accompanied me to doctors' appointments where I actually took the doctors fingers and placed them in the area where it is impossible NOT to appreciate the lack of support to the inner structures in the neck, making it necessary for me to provide this support externally with a piece of wood. You cannot make a doctor perform an adequate physical examination.

This says it all:

"I have learned all to well how doctors stand in line behind each other. If I'd been in a car accident they'd be falling all over themselves to help. But because this was another doctor's mess no one wants anything to do with me. They won't even examine me. I have fabulous insurance and enough money to get stuff fixed but they won't get involved. It is so painful to get assaulted the first time and then get rejected over and over again. I can't believe this has happened to me. I trusted this guy and all the doctors that came after him. I hate that I no longer trust anyone. I miss that part of me. I want my life back. But I can't be fixed if no one will fully examine me. The only analogy I can think of is it is like being raped and assaulted by a policeman and then having to go to the police station to get help. Having to tell your story over and over again hoping to get someone willing to help you. "


"There definitely needs to be a better way. There is no recourse against them. In California even if a doctor kills you they get a slap on the wrist. The only thing that we can do is get our stories out there. The lawyers don't make a dime so they don't want to sue. The doctors know that and feel like they are untouchable."



It is impossible for anyone who has not suffered this experience to understand how it kills the soul. It kills you thoroughly- inside and out. People who have not personally been through this Hell cannot understand how a doctor can refuse to examine you. They do not refuse outright.. . The do not elevate the interaction to that degree of honesty! It is done through subterfuge and manipulation. It is a strategic maneuver intended to make the medical record appear as if there is nothing wrong. They are expert in covering failure to perform an adequate physical examination and appropriate diagnostics through their manipulation of the language in the medical record. Risk management manuals tell doctors exactly how to legally drive injured patients around in circles... until they just drop dead. From the perspective of the medical profession, that is the point- stall off long enough and sooner or later the patient will just disappear, i.e: die.

Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Patient left in dark after ‘odyssey’-Suit outlines nightmare surgery at Beth Israel

A major Boston hospital that touts its commitment to “disclosure and honesty” faces legal action from an anguished veteran who says he was left in the dark for weeks after a simple cosmetic procedure spun into an “odyssey” of pain and suffering.

“I am furious that nobody at Beth Israel Deaconess cared enough to tell me what happened,” said Michael K. Hicks, 39, of Quincy. He has filed a civil suit accusing the renowned medical center of not owning up to its errors in the hours and days after his elective June 27 liposuction.

Prominent plastic surgeon Dr. Loren J. Borud, 44, was fired several weeks after the surgery, on July 18. Beth Israel first reached out to Hicks, who suffered bleeding, pain and emotional turmoil, after the Boston Herald began inquiring about Borud’s past on July 16.

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